WHY    AMERICAN    MARRIAGES 
FAIL 

AND   OTHER   PAPERS 


WHY 

AMERICAN    MARRIAGES 
FAIL 

AND  OTHER  PAPERS 

BY 

ANNA  A.  ROGERS 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 

HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 

1909 


COPYRIGHT,   1909,  BY  EUSTACE  B.  ROGERS 
ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED 

Published  November  IQOQ 


IN     MEMORIAM 
ANNA    ALEXANDER    ROGERS 


CONTENTS 

WHY  AMERICAN  MARRIAGES  FAIL  3 
SOME  FAULTS  OF  AMERICAN  MEN*  43 
WHY  AMERICAN  MOTHERS  FAIL  71 

WHAT  WE  PUT  UP  WITH  in 

BEHIND  THE  TIMES  151 

4 

A  FEW  FALLACIES  IN   OUR   EDUCA- 
TION 185 


WHY  AMERICAN  MARRIAGES 
FAIL 


WHY  AMERICAN 'MARRIAGES 
FAIL 


THE    STAGE    OF    THE    KNIFE 

"  We  surgeons  of  the  law 
do  desperate  cures,  Sir  !  " 

THAT  a  large  percentage  of  marriages 
achieve  very  little  beyond  a  bare  working 
compromise  with  happiness  is  not  to  be 
seriously  denied.  Nor  is  it  to  be  doubted 
that  there  are  more  matrimonial  catastro- 
phes to-day  than  there  were  a  generation 
ago.  In  fact,  every  recent  decade  has  shown 
a  marked  increase  in  the  evil  of  divorce  in 
the  United  States, —  out  of  all  proportion 
to  the  growth  of  population.  It  is  also  a 
matter  of  statistics  that  the  evil  is  growing 
more  rapidly  in  our  country  than  in  Eu- 
rope. Of  course,  this  preponderance  may 
3 


AMERICAN    MARRIAGES 

be  partly  accounted  for  by  the  greater 
number  of  divorce  courts  on  this  side  of 
,, the  Atlantic.  We  have  2921  courts  which 
have  the  pdxver.to  grant  divorces,  as  against 
England's  one,  Germany's  twenty-eight, 
and  France's  seventy-nine. 

Since  during  the  last  fifty  years  more 
radical  changes  by  far  have  come  in  the 
I  social  status  of  women  than  in  that  of 
men,  there  is  a  chance  that  at  her  door 
may  lie  the  cause  of  at  least  some  of  this 
fast-growing  social  disease.  And  it  is  upon 
'hat  admittedly  daring  assumption  that 
these  few  suggestions  are  based. 

There  are  those  who  consider  that  the 
statistics  of  divorce  represent  only  an  ap- 
parent fact,  the  argument  being  that  this 
is  the  age  of  expression,  not  suppression. 
They  go  on  to  say  that  there  are  few  more 
diseases  in  the  world  of  to-day  than  there 
were  in  Babylon,  but  that  the  wider  and 
more  intelligent  recognition  of  disease  and 
the  modern  differentiation  in  diagnosis  lead 
to  a  false  impression;  that  the  real  differ- 
4 


AMERICAN    MARRIAGES 

ence  lies  in  the  fact  that  a  physician's  work 
is  now  done  in  the  open ;  that  his  discov- 
eries belong  to  the  morning  paper ;  and 
that  our  modern  life  teems  with  specialists, 
hospitals,  and  an  ever-enlarging  materia 
medica.  Medical  books  and  magazines  and 
lectures  are  more  and  more  accessible  to 
the  general  public. 

In  the  same  way  it  is  claimed  that  the 
increasing  difficulties  in  the  marriage  rela- 
tion to-day  are  only  apparent;  that  that 
question,  too,  has  only  just  come  into  the 
open.  The  lovers  of  individualism  main- 
tain that  it  is  high  time  that  the  enlight- 
ened surgery  of  divorce  was  resorted  to, 
forgetting  that  "  the  significance  of  the  in- 
crease of  divorce  must  be  sought  in  its 
relation  to  the  family  and  the  social  order 
generally,  rather  than  for  its  bearing  on 
individual  morality,"  still  less  for  its  bear- 
ing on  individual  happiness. 

To  follow  the  parallel  a  bit  farther,  may 
it  not  be  suggested  that,  as  there  is  a  grow- 
ing conviction  among  the  best  physicians 
5 


AMERICAN    MARRIAGES 

that  the  knife  is  resorted  to  unnecessarily 
often  to  right  physical  disorders,  the  same 
may  be  true  of  psychological  disorders  ? 
Gentler  remedies,  dietary  measures,  the 
daily  regime  of  more  intelligent  living,  have 
been  known  to  spare  more  than  one  pa- 
tient the  horrors  of  the  operating  table. 
In  fact,  is  not  prevention  the  only  genu- 
ine modern  miracle  ?  Toward  that  great 
end  surely  come  all  the  physical  sciences, 
all  social  philanthropies  and  philosophies, 
bringing  in  outstretched  hands  their  gifts 
to  suffering  humanity! 

Three  "  instances  "  come  uppermost : 
(i)  Woman's  failure  to  realize  that  mar- 
riage is  her  work  in  the  world.  (2)  Her 
growing  individualism.  (3)  Her  lost  art 
of  giving,  replaced  by  a  highly  developed 
receptive  faculty. 

First :  Marriage  is  woman's  work  in  the 
L  world  —  not  man's.  From  whatever  point 
it  is  viewed,  physical  or  spiritual,  as  a  ques- 
tion of  civic  polity  or  a  question  of  indi- 
vidual ethics,  it  is  her  specific  share  of  the 
6 


AMERICAN    MARRIAGES 

world's  work — first,  last,  and  always  ;  al- 
lotted to  her  by  laws  far  stronger  than  she 
is.  And  the  woman  who  fails  to  recognize 
this  and  acknowledge  it  has  the  germ  of 
divorce  in  her  veins  at  the  outset. 

Moonlit  and  springtime  moods  all  to 
the  contrary,  the  fact  remains  that  marriage 
is  not  a  man's  work,  but  one  of  his  dearest 
delusions,  from  which  he  parts  begrudg- 
ingly.  Moreover,  it  is  not  even  necessary 
to  him  in  the  accomplishment  of  those 
things  which  are  his  work.  It  is  generally 
no  more  than  his  dream  of  prolonging 
through  years  a  humanly  improbable  con- 
dition. Happiness  as  a  husband  and  father 
has  always  been  his  scarcely  whispered 
prayer,  his  dearest  secret  hope,  toward 
which  all  his  idealism  yearns.  That  numer- 
ous other  and  very  potent  motives  enter 
into  men's  hearts  is  not  in  the  least  over- 
looked; it  is  only  claimed  that  to  the  aver- 
age man  his  future  marriage  is  little  more 
than  a  very  beautiful  dream. 

But  the  wife  who  insists  childishly  upon 
7 


AMERICAN    MARRIAGES 

treating  marriage,  either  in  theory  or  in 
practice,  as  a  beautiful  dream,  is  forgetful 
of  how  very  little  is  left  of  earnest  life-work 
for  a  woman  if  she  repudiates  the  dignified 
duty  of  wedlock  placed  upon  her  shoul- 
ders. Why  should  she  not  be  taught  the 
plain  fact  that  no  other  work  really  impor- 
tant to  the  world  has  ever  been  done  by  a 
woman  since  "  the  morning  of  the  world  "  ? 
Only  as  a  woman,  with  all  that  that  entails 
upon  her,  is  she  alone,  preeminent,  unap- 
proachable. And  yet  apparently  her  whole 
energy  is  to-day  bent  upon  dethroning 
herself ! 

Men,  at  this  stage  of  civilization,  are  not 

only  the  world's  workers,  breadwinners, 

home-builders,  fighters,  supporters  of  all 

civic  duties,  —  they  are  also  the  world's 

.idealists.  All  else  is  mere  quibbling  ! 

/        Whatever  the  future  may  develop,  up  to 

j   the  present  time  no  great  religion,  deserv- 

j    ing  the  name,  has  ever  been  founded  by  a 

I    woman  ;  no  vital  discovery  in  science  ever 

Nmade  by  her;  no  important  system  of  phi- 

8 


AMERICAN  MARRIAGES 

N 
losophy  ;  no  code  of  laws  either  formulated  \ 

or  administered.  Nor  along  the  supposedly  / 

more  feminine  lines  of  human  develop-  7 

i  11  «          \ 

ment  has,  as  yet,  any  really  preeminent  \ 

work  come  from  her.  Upon  literature, 
music,  sculpture,  painting,  women  have  as  J 
yet  made  very  few  enduring  marks.  As  to 
her  recent  small  successes  at  self-support, 
however  to  be  commended  and  encouraged, 
they  do  not  lead  to  any  big  end  outside  of 
herself  or  her  immediate  surroundings ; 
her  purposes  are  personal  and  ephemeral. 
The  poets  are  responsible  for  much  of 
the  present  feminine  megalomania,  but 
modern  scientists  are  effectively  reducing 
the  swelling,  as  it  were ;  which  may  lead  to 
a  generally  healthier  social  condition  all 
around  the  family  circle.  In  estimating  the 
secondary  differences  between  men  and 
women,  Havelock  Ellis's  interesting  sum- 
mary of  what  recent  scientific  research  has 
so  far  accomplished  states  several  facts  that 
are  markedly  contrary  to  the  general  drift 
of  unscientific  opinion  :  — 
9 


AMERICAN  MARRIAGES 

"  As  regards  the  various  senses  .  .  . 
the  balance  of  advantage  on  the  side  of 
women  is  less  emphatically  on  their  side 
than  popular  notions  would  have  led  us  to 
expect.  The  popular  belief  is  really  founded 
on  the  confusion  of  two  totally  distinct 
nervous  qualities :  sensibility  and  irritabil- 
ity— or  as  it  is  perhaps  better  called,  affec- 
tability; women  having  greater  irritability, 
men  deeper  sensibility/' 

Galton,  the  pioneer  in  accurate  study  of 
the  sensory  differences  between  man  and 
woman,  remarks:  "  I  found  as  a  rule  that 
men  have  more  delicate  powers  of  discrim- 
ination than  women,  and  the  business  ex- 
perience of  life  seems  to  confirm  this." 

Two  of  Ellis's  more  homely  illustrations 
tend  to  support  this  view:  cc  It  is  worthy 
of  note  that  pianoforte  tuners  are  usually 
men"  ;  and,  "men  have  a  monopoly  of  the 
higher  walks  of  culinary  art ;  women  are 
not  employed  in  such  occupations  as  tea- 
tasting,  which  requires  specially  delicate 
discrimination ;  they  are  rarely  good  con- 
10 


AMERICAN  MARRIAGES 

noisseurs  of  wine  ;  and  while  gourmandes 
are  common,  the  more  refined  expression 
gourmet  does  not  even  possess  a  feminine 
form." 

The  few  foregoing  suggestions  are  of- 
fered in  refutation  of  the  present  false  and 
demoralizing  deification  of  women,  espe- 
cially in  this  country,  an  idolatry  of  which 
we  as  a  people  are  so  inordinately  proud.^ 
One  of  the  evil  effects  of  this  attitude  is  : 
shown  in  the  intolerance  and  selfishness  of 
young  wives,  which  is  largely  responsible  , 
for  the  scandalous  slackening  of  marriage 
ties  in  the  United  States.  Every  stranger 
coming  within  our  gates  is  amazed  at  the 
social  domination  of  the 


try,  the  subordination  to  her  and  her  wishes 
of  the  hard-working,  self-effacing  male. 

An  extreme  antithesis  to  this  American 
woman-worship  is  of  course  to  be  found 
in  England  ;  and  a  picture  comes  to  mind 
full  of  grim  humor  —  a  typical  John  Bull, 
deep  magenta  complexion,  Pickwickian  in 
figure,  as  sure  of  himself  as  the  sun  itself, 
ii 


AMERICAN   MARRIAGES 

the  entirely  joyless  parent  of  four  grown 
daughters.  They  stood  in  line  before  the 
counter  in  a  silk  shop  in  Italy.  Four 
lengths  of  the  same  dull  elderly  shade  of 
purple  were  measured  off  and  paid  for  by 
the  Great  Briton  ;  the  four  Britonesses 
stood  helpless,  voiceless,  exchanging  sly 
glances  of  bitter  disappointment  and  dis- 
gust. They  were  asked  no  questions,  hence 
they  were  as  dumb  as  the  beasts  of  the  field. 
Once  papa  remarked  with  resounding  com- 
placence :  — 

"A  good  wearing  shade,  my  dears." 
"  Oh,  yes,  papa ! "returned  the  spiritless 
chorus. 

Papa  gave  each  one  her  bundle,  where- 
upon she  said,  "  Thank  you,  papa ! "  And 
then  he  led  the  way  pompously,  and  the 
five  filed  out,  the  narrow,  broken-hearted 
shoulders  of  the  girls  drooping  more  than 
ever.  The  big  brilliant  eyes  of  the  Italian 
clerk  met  those  of  the  writer,  an  interna- 
tional smile  was  exchanged,  and  he  exploded 
into  two  words  :  — 

12 


AMERICAN   MARRIAGES 

"  Barbara  !  Sauvage  !  " 

But  that  some  middle  ground  between 
these  poor  abject  English  girls  and  our 
equally  abject  American  fathers  and  hus- 
bands may  be  discovered,  is  not  despaired 
of  in  this  age  of  many  and  sudden  changes. 

It  is  contended  (not  without  a  decent 
show  of  timidity !)  that  in  marriage,  more 
often  than  not,  the  man  is  the  idealist,  how- 
ever far  he  himself  falls  short  of  his  own 
standards.  Witness  his  inevitable  dislike 
for  and  impatience  of  the  whole  barbaric  dis- 
play of  a  public  wedding  —  that  senseless 
whirl  of  grossly  material  things  in  which 
women  revel.  "What  has  it  all  to  do  with 
you,  and  our  love,  our  happiness  ?  "  What 
wife  has  not  stored  away  somewhere  in  her 
memory  words  like  these,  pleaded  in  a 
lover's  voice  ?  And  the  chances  are  that 
the  woman  called  him  selfish,  and  swore 
prettily  that  she  reveled  in  "such  vile 
matter,"  so  she  be  "  fairly  bound." 

The  average  wife  who  manages  to  live, 
after  a  marriage  for  love,  up  to  the  aver- 


AMERICAN  MARRIAGES 

age  husband's  ideal  of  her  before  marriage, 
I  will,  it  is  safe  to  say,  reach  her  highest  spi- 
|  ritual  development.  She  need  not  aspire  to 
any  higher  goal  than  the  poor  man's  own 
illusions!  The  real  trouble  is  that  they  are 
rather  likely  to  prove  uncomfortably  ex- 
alted. 

In  fact,  to  preserve  his  ideal  of  her  — 
just  the  average  busy  man  —  is  really  her 
life-work.  Hers,  somehow,  by  hook  or  by 
crook,  to  save  out  of  the  inevitable  strife 
of  those  early  days  of  character  reconstruc- 
tion, at  least  a  workable  armistice;  some 
sort  of  a  broad  friendship  which  leaves 
room  for  human  frailties ;  to  cultivate  a 
habit  of  reasonable  concession ;  a  motherly 
wish  to  be  a  source  of  harmony  to  her  hus- 
band ;  and  an  honest  determination  to  ar- 
rest the  disease  of  "  incompatibility  "  (la- 
tent always)  in  its  incipiency,  long  years 
before  it  reaches  the  stage  of  the  knife ;  to 
rise  a  little  above  the  primitive  frankness 
of  a  certain  colored  wife  who  admitted  non- 
chalantly,— "  Oh,  yes,  I  done  left  'im!" 


AMERICAN  MARRIAGES 

"  Wha'  for  you  done  left  'im?"  she  was 
asked.  "  Oh,  I  jes'  natch 'ully  los'  all  taste 
fo'  'im!"  Which  explanation,  crude  as  it 
is,  would  cover  the  cause  of  an  astonish- 
ing number  of  divorces  in  this  year  of 
grace  1907. 


II 


GROWTH    OF    INDIVIDUALISM 
"  My  sweet,  my  own —  Myself !  " 

THE  rock  upon  which  most  of  the  flower- 
bedecked  marriage  barges  go  to  pieces  is 
the  latter-day  cult  of  individualism;  the 
worship  of  the  brazen  calf  of  Self. 

It  is  admittedly  not  easy  to  remember 
that  our  lives  are  only  important  as  inte- 
gral parts  of  a  big  social  system.  Espe- 
cially difficult  is  it  for  a  woman  to  be  made 
to  realize  this,  because  her  whole  life  hith- 
erto has  been  generally  an  experiment  in 
individualism ;  whereas  a  man's,  since  the 
first  primitive  times,  has  become  more  and 
more  an  experiment  in  communism.  The 
inborn  rampant  ego  in  every  man  has  found 
its  wholesome  outlet  in  hard  work,  gener- 
ally community-work,  which  further  keeps 
down  his  egoism ;  whereas  the  devouring 
ego  in  the  "  new  woman  "  is  as  yet  largely 
16 


AMERICAN   MARRIAGES 

a  useless,  uneasy  factor,  vouchsafing  her 
very  little  more  peace  than  it  does  those 
in  her  immediate  surcharged  vicinity. 

Nowadays  she  receives  almost  a  man's 
mental  and  muscular  equipment  in  school 
or  college,  and  then  at  the  age  of  twenty 
she  stops  dead  short  and  faces  a  world  of 
—  negatives!  No  exigent  duties,  no  im- 
perative work,  no  manner  of  expending 
normally  her  highly-developed,  hungry  en- 
ergies. That  they  turn  back  upon  her  and 
devour  her  is  not  to  be  wondered  at.  One 
is  reminded  of  that  irresistible  character- 
ization :  "  Alarm-clock  women  that  buzz 
for  a  little  and  then  run  down." 

And  so  it  comes  to  pass  that  this  high- 
ly trained,  well-equipped  (and  also  ill- 
equipped)  feminine  ego  faces  wifehood  — 
the  one  and  only  subject  about  which  she 
is  persistently  kept  in  the  dark.  And  from 
the  outset  she  fails  to  realize,  never  having 
been  taught  it,  that  what  she  then  faces  is 
not  a  brilliant  presentation  at  the  Court  of 
Love,  not  a  dream  of  ecstasy  and  triumph, 


AMERICAN   MARRIAGES 

not  even  a  lucky  and  comfortable  life-billet 
—  she  is  facing  her  work  at  last !  her  diffi- 
cult, often  intensely  disagreeable  and  dan- 
gerous, life-task.  And  her  salary  of  love 
will  sometimes  be  only  partly  paid,  some- 
times begrudgingly,  sometimes  not  at  all, 
— very  rarely  overpaid,  —  by  either  her 
husband  or  her  children.  One  of  the  pre- 
cise facts  that  young  women  should  be 
taught,  as  they  are  taught  physical  geo- 
graphy, is  that  men,  all  men,  have  their 
high  and  low  emotional  tides,  and  a  good 
wife  is  the  immovable  shore  to  her  hus- 
band's restless  life. 

It  would  appear  that  the  indiscriminate 
and  undigested  education  of  the  female 
masses  and  classes  is  depriving  us  Amer- 
icans of  good  servants  and  of  good  wives 
at  once.  They  are  all  "above  their  sta- 
tion!" 

/       The  really  small  percentage  of  unmar- 

j  ried  women  who  have  the  blessing  of  paid 

<    work  of  any  sort  in  their  lives  (as  an  ab- 

V  solute  necessity  against  starvation)  are  of 

>  18 


AMERICAN   MARRIAGES 

the  elect,  and  of  course  know  it  not!  The    J 
rest  must  wait  for  matrimony,  if  modest ;  / 
struggle  for  it,  if  not.  And  then  all  this  / 
unexpended  feminine  egoism,  joined  with  ^> 
unexpended    physical    energy,    demands   / 
from   the  normally   expended    masculine    \ 
egoism  far  more  of  everything  than   he  is     1 
at  all  prepared  to  give,  far  more  than  she 
has  any  just  claim  to  demand.  More  of 
his  love,more  admiration,  more  time,  more 
money — she  wants  more  of  them  all   to 
satisfy  her  recently  discovered  Sell.  Ask 
tKe  first  girl  bf  twenty  who  presents  her- 
self, let  her  be  the  average  badly  educated, 
restless,  pampered,  passionate,  but  shallow- 
natured  maiden  of  the  day, — superb  in 
physique,  meagre  in  sentiment,  —  and  note 
her  answer  as  to  what  she  demands  (not 
hopes  for!)  of  her  probable  husband,  quite 
irrespective  of  what  he  may  get  in  return. 
He  must  be  a  god  physically  (that  seems 
to  be  the  modern  American  girl's  sine  qua 
nori) ;  he  must  have  wealth,  brains,  educa- 
tion, position,  a  perfect  temper,  and  a  lim- 
19 


AMERICAN   MARRIAGES 

itless  capacity  to  adore  her,  kneeling.  And 
he,  poor  soul,  after  the  first  exigent  mood, 
which  soon  passes,  wants  very  little  more 
than  peace  and  a  place  to  smoke  unmo- 
lested ;  combined  preferably  with  a  guar- 
anteed blindness  to  his  general  faults  and 
particular  fads.  A  recent  public  vote  on 
this  subject  actually  resulted  in  a  stronger 
poll  for  "sweet  temper"  than  for  any  other 
masculine  prerequisite  in  a  wife. 

In  a  broader  aspect  American  women  are 
as  a  whole  pampered  and  worshiped  out  of 
all  reason,  a  condition  which  is  sometimes 
found  in  young  civilizations.  In  even  a 
brief  comparison  with  the  same  class  in 
other  countries,  it  will  be  found  that  our 
women  as  a  whole  do  not  deserve  it.  In 
France  the  proportion  of  wage-earning 
women  is  thirty-four  per  cent  of  the  wage- 
earning  population;  in  the  United  States 
it  is  only  seventeen  percent.  In  France  the 
working-women  form  eighteen  per  cent 
of  the  population,  compared  with  six  per 
cent  in  this  country.  Further,  they  do  not 

20 


AMERICAN   MARRIAGES 

render  the  conscientious  careful  personal 
domestic  service  of  the  German  women ; 
nor  the  financial  support  of  French  wives, 
and  intelligent  helpfulness  in  commercial 
as  well  as  domestic  affairs.  How  many 
American  husbands  could  seriously  advise 
with  their  wives  on  the  subject  ot  business 
and  expect  even  comprehension,  let  alone 
sound  business  advice  ?  An  astonishing 
number  ot  Frenchwomen  of  all  classes  are 
in  commercial  matters  the  gifted  "  silent 
partners  "  of  their  husbands,  however  lo- 
quacious in  social  doings.  The  painstaking 
thrift  of  European  women  has  no  parallel 
in  this  country;  nor  the  painstaking  clean- 
liness that  is  a  revelation  to  American  eyes 
accustomed  to  the  general  "slouch"  from 
one  end  of  the  United  States  to  another. 
It  has  been  said  of  the  much-maligned 
Italians  that  only  among  the  Chinese  can 
be  found  a  parallel  to  their  almost  tragic 
economies.  Half  of  Italy  could  live  on 
what  New  York  City  alone  throws  away  in 
a  year.  In  England,  too,  every  intelligent 

21 


AMERICAN   MARRIAGES 

woman  understands  politics,  would  be 
ashamed  not  fully  to  comprehend  the 
measures  before  Parliament;  and  during 
election  times  she  works  with  the  energy 
of  a  ward  politician  for  the  man  or  idea  that 
has  won  the  right  to  her  loyalty.  Then, 
too,  she  lives  more  in  other  people's  lives 
than  we  do.  Each  woman  feels  her  obliga- 
tion to  give  much  of  her  energy  to  an  end- 
less detail  of  philanthropic  work  in  her 
immediate  neighborhood. 

On  the  other  hand  very  much  more 
philanthropic  work  is  done  in  this  country, 
outside  of  the  churches,  than  in  England, 
but  it  is  managed  on  a  broader,  less  per- 
sonal basis.  In  fact,  it  is  left  to  twenty 
clear-headed,  business-like  women  to  do 
the  work  which  is  divided  among  two  thou- 
sand of  her  English  sisters.  This  is  pre- 
cisely what  the  writer  wishes  to  prove,  — 
the  general  idleness  and  self-centredness  of 
the  average  American  woman,  and  her  un- 
proved claim  to  be  worshiped. 

One  very  salient  difference  strikes  the 
22 


AMERICAN    MARRIAGES 

American  traveler  in  walking  before  noon 
about  any  of,  say,  four  European  cities, 
London,  Paris,  Berlin,  or  Vienna.  It  may 
be  summed  up  in  the  exclamation, "  Why, 
where  are  the  women?"  An  Italian  friend 
fighting  his  way  along  Washington  Street 
in  Boston,  walking,  not  on  the  sidewalk, 
which  was  a  solid  immovable  congestion 
of  femininity,  but  on  the  cobblestones  of 
the  narrow  street,  was  heard  to  gasp,  "The 
Public  is  here  a  common  noun  of  the  femi- 
nine gender!"  He  on  his  side  wondered 
where  the  men  were.  The  whole  world  of 
women  in  the  city,  and  from  its  suburbs, 
apparently,  betakes  itself  to  the  shops 
every  day,  between  nine  o'clock  and 
twelve.  Shops  are  stifling,  street-cars 
jammed,  sidewalks  impassable.  This  is 
more  or  less  true  of  shopping  districts  in 
all  cities  all  over  the  United  States. 

This   phenomenon  represents    several 

truths :  we  are  prosperous  ;  our  men  never 

"  shop  " ;  and  as  a  people  our  women  dress 

far  beyond  their  incomes,  the  men  remain- 

23 


AMERICAN   MARRIAGES 

ing  singularly  negligent  in  their  dress. 
Our  sense  of  proportion  in  money  expendi- 
ture has  not  yet  properly  developed ;  that 
only  comes  in  a  more  advanced  stage  of 
civilization. 

On  a  morning  walk  an  English  woman 
said  to  the  writer,  in  one  of  our  western 
cities  especially  given  over  to  the  national 
passion  for  dress,  "  Any  countrywoman  of 
mine  dressed  as  that  woman  is,  or  that, 
or  that,  would  be  in  her  carriage.  She  would 
return  to  a  substantial  home,  the  door  would 
be  opened  by  a  man  in  livery,  every  item  of 
her  environment  would  match  the  elegance 
of  those  furs,  that  frightfully  expensive  hat, 
that  very. smart  broadcloth  walking  suit. 
Whereas  the  chances  are  (you  see  I've 
been  keeping  my  eyes  open!)  that  she  came 
in  a  street-car,  and  will  go  home  in  one ; 
she  lives  either  in  tiny  lodgings,  —  I  beg 
your  pardon,  flat! — and  will  open  her  front 
door  with  a  pass-key ;  or  else  she  lives  in 
one  of  the  suburban  towns,  in  a  very 
trumpery  sort  of  little  house,  which  does 
24 


AMERICAN    MARRIAGES 

not  in  the  least  match  those  furs  nor  that 
hat!  And  a  slovenly  c  slavey'  attends  the 
door  when  she  rings  for  admittance  —  " 

"  Or  what  is  much  more  likely,  her 
daughter  or  her  mother,"  added  the  Amer- 
ican. 

The  main  cause  of  this  daily  submer- 
gence of  our  streets  by  the  feminine  world  is 
not  mere  vanity,  for  the  industrious,  home- 
staying  French  women  have  that  quality  to 
an  even  greater  and  much  more  insidious 
degree.  It  seems  to  be  a  combination  of 
excessive  energy  and  sheer  idleness  of  pur- 
pose, and  the  national  vice  of  extravagance. 

The  writer  has  taken  the  time  and  pains 
to  follow,  more  than  once,  several  typical 
American  women  on  a  typical  morning 
shopping  tour,  and  has  discovered  the 
anomaly  that  the  longer  they  take  to  shop, 
the  less  they  actually  buy!  And  these  idlers 
are  not  the  well-dressed  prosperous  women, 
— they  are  the  poorly  clad,  pale  and  irritable 
from  fatigue.  From  counter  to  counter 
they  go,  fingering,  pricing,  commenting, 
25 


AMERICAN   MARRIAGES 

passing  on,  hour  after  hour.  Sometirnes  an 
ice-cream  soda  in  the  basement  is  their  only 
lunch,  followed  by  a  complete  rearrange- 
ment of  hair  in  the  "  Ladies  Parlor  " ;  then 
a  slow  stroll  through  the  "Art  Depart- 
ment," and  they  remark  casually  to  any  one 
who  will  listen,  "  Well,  I  guess  it 's  about 
time  to  go  home!  "  One  involuntarily  won- 
ders about  that  "  home  "  !  These  facts  are 
true  of  tens  of  thousands  of  our  women  in 
every  city  in  the  Union ;  and  much  travel 
has  failed  to  discover  their  exact  equiva- 
lent anywhere  else  in  the  world. 

These  facts  mean  a  big  economic  loss 
somewhere  in  our  development.  All  the 
writer  cares  to  claim  is  that  our  women  as 
a  whole  are  spoiled,  extremely  idle,  and 
curiously  undeserving  of  the  maudlin  wor- 
ship that  they  demand  from  our  hard-work- 
ing men. 

That  the  higher-class  women  waste  their 

time  in  equal  measure  is  still  more  easy  of 

proof.  They  crowd  the  smarter  shops,  bent 

on  the  American  worship  of  "  Everything 

26 


AMERICAN    MARRIAGES 

Ready-made  "  ;  matinees  are  packed  with 
solidly  feminine  audiences.  The  hair- 
dressers', the  manicurists',  the  cafes  at  lunch- 
time,  are  full  to  overflowing  with  women 
—  extravagant,  idle,  self-centred.  More- 
over, the  always  small  class  of  so-called 
society  women,  per  se,  works  harder  and 
during  longer  hours  in  their  pursuit  of 
pleasure  than  any  other  women  in  our 
country.  They  must  perforce  live  by  some 
sort  of  regulation  and  economy  of  energy 
to  remain  in  the  running  at  all. 

Of  course  there  are  capable,  earnest,  in- 
dustrious specimens  of  beautiful  woman- 
hood in  every  city,  town,  or  village  in  the 
land,  who  make  not  only  good  wives  and 
mothers,  but  who  are  leaders  in  philan- 
thropic work,  and  often  also  retain  their 
social  preeminence  by  a  careful  apportion- 
ing of  their  time  and  vitality.  These  ex- 
ceptions serve  to  emphasize  the  unworthi- 
ness  of  the  woman  who  strives  but  to 

"  live  and  breathe  and  die 
A  rose-fed  pig  in  an  aesthetic  sty!  " 
27 


AMERICAN   MARRIAGES 

She  has  not  merged  her  fate  with  her  hus- 
band's if  married,  nor  with  her  father's  if 
not ;  she  does  not  properly  supplement 
their  lives,  she  is  striving  for  a  detached 
profitless  individuality.  I  emphasize  this, 
for  the  fact  that  men  are  selfish,  and  vicious, 
and  "  desperately  wicked,"  has  been  so 
thoroughly  exploited,  that  the  preference 
given  to  a  less  acknowledged  economic 
situation  may  perhaps  be  pardoned. 


Ill 


"  Wifehood  is  thought  great  in  India  in  proportion 
to  its  giving,  not  receiving. ' '  —  SISTER  NEVEDITA. 

IN  India  an  affection  which  asks  for  an 
equal  return,  so  many  heartbeats  for  a  like 
number,  is  called  "shop-keeping."  Among 
us  Westerners  this  Eastern  exalted  faculty 
of  giving  affection  and  not  looking  for  any 
equable  exchange  of  commodities,  has  de- 
generated into  a  sort  of  passion  for  senti- 
mental bargains! 

Unfortunately,  there  are  no  genuine  psy- 
chic bargains  thrown  out  on  life's  counter. 
The  really  good  spiritual  things  cost  the 
most,  as  do  the  material  things.  Success 
in  any  undertaking,  even  marriage,  is  al- 
ways both  shy  and  obstinate,  and  hides 
behind  quite  a  thorny  hedge  of  persistence, 
hard  work,  unselfishness,  and  above  all, 
patience,  a  quality,  now  gone  out  of  fashion, 
which  made  of  our  grandmothers  civiliz- 
ing centres  of  peace  and  harmony ;  for 
29 


AMERICAN    MARRIAGES 

they  were  content  to  use  slow  curative 
measures  to  mend  their  matrimonial  ail- 
ments, and  the  "  knife  "  was  looked  upon 
with  horror.  One  finds  so  often  in  the 
women  of  that  generation  a  strange  quiet 
as  of  wisdom  long  digested  ;  a  deep  abid- 
ing strength ;  an  aloofness  of  personality 
that  makes  for  dignity ;  sweet  old  faces  that 
bear  the  marks  of"  love's  grandeur."  What 
is  there  to-day  in  all  this  fret  and  fuss  and 
fury  of  feminine  living,  that  compares  with 
the  power  for  good  of  these  wonderful  old 
women,  fast  disappearing  ? 

We,  of  our  day,  on  the  contrary,  hear 
much  of  such  things  as  these :  "  Out  upon 
your  patience!  If  patience  had  not  gone 
out  of  us  women,  we  should  still  be  sold 
in  the  market-places !  From  it  were  welded 
our  chains,  and  the  whole  ignominy  of  the 
past." 

There  is  really  only  one  serious  objec- 
tion to  this  sort  of  talk  —  it  is  not  true. 
The  abolition  of  all  forms  of  slavery  that 
the  world  has  ever  seen  began  in  some 
30 


AMERICAN    MARRIAGES 

mans  brain,  working  from  above  down, 
not  from  beneath  up!  No  great  united  ac- 
tion of  women  has  led  to  their  gradual 
emancipation.  Big  changes  such  as  that 
have  always  been  born  in  some  man's  big 
soul,  an  entirely  impersonal  masculine  ide- 
ality working  slowly  toward  the  general 
good. 

Girls  are  capable  of  great  patience,  en- 
ergy, and  persistence  in  the  acquisition  of 
education  or  what  are  known  as  accom- 
plishments. And  later  on  in  life,  if  women, 
bent  on  social  success,  were  as  easily  dis- 
couraged, as  exacting,  as  irritable  in  the 
accomplishment  of  that  task,  as  they  often 
are  in  the  undertaking  of  marriage,  the  list  of 
the  world's  successful  salons  would  indeed 
be  a  brief  one.  There  is  no  doubt  that  the 
women  of  the  day  have  the  qualities  that 
would  make  for  success,  even  in  marriage, 
if  they  elected  to  expend  them  in  these 
commonplace  ways. 

But  the  present  excessive  education  of 
young  women,  and  excessive  physical  cod- 
31 


AMERICAN   MARRIAGES 

dling  (the  gymnastics,  breathing  exercises, 
public  and  private  physical  culture,  the 
masseurs,  the  manicurists,  the  shampooers) 
have  produced  a  curious  anomalous  hybrid : 
a  cross  between  a  magnificent,  rather  un- 
mannerly boy,  and  a  spoiled,  exacting, 
demi-mondaine,  who  sincerely  loves  in  this 
world  herself  alone.  Thus  quite  a  new  re- 
lationship between  the  sexes  has  arisen, 
a  slipshod  unchivalrous  companionship, 
which  before  marriage  they  nominate 
"good  form, "  but  which  after  marriage 
they  illogically  discover  to  be  cause  for  tears 
or  for  temper. 

Two  winters  ago  an  old-fashioned  wo- 
man who  had  lived  in  many  lands  chap- 
eroned a  party  of  well-bred,  decidedly 
"smart"  Am  erican  young  people,  bent  upon 
examining  into  some  of  the  larger  settle- 
ment workings  of  New  York  City.  Dur- 
ing a  long  evening  entailing  much  walking 
and  crossing  of  crowded  streets,  the  girls 
strode  along  as  detached  and  independent 
as  if  it  were  broad  daylight,  and  they  quite 
32 


AMERICAN   MARRIAGES 

friendless.  They  crossed  the  bustling  ave- 
nues, climbed  in  and  out  of  cars,  and  never 
one  masculine  hand  raised  to  help,  nor 
voice  to  guide.  The  effect  of  such  almost 
brutal  discourtesy  was  startling  indeed  to 
the  older  woman,  who  had  for  years  been 
out  of  touch  with  young  America.  One 
generation  had  brought  this  painful  change 
about.  Whose  new  ideal  of  sex-relation 
was  this?  Before  the  evening  was  over  illu- 
mination came. 

"  Will  you  be  good  enough  to  give  me 
your  hand  as  I  get  out  of  the  car  ?  I  'm 
accustomed  to  it,"  finally  said  the  woman 
of  a  past  generation  in  a  decidedly  un- 
amiable  tone. 

The  young  man's  hand  went  out  will- 
ingly at  the  next  stop,  and  in  a  low  voice 
he  said,  with  a  sigh  and  a  smile :  — 

"  It's  a  comfort  to  be  with  a  woman  once 
more  who  wants  such  a  thing!  I  hope 
you  '11  pardon  me,  but  it 's  not  our  fault. 
The  girls  snub  us,  you  know,  and  say  it's 
the  worst  possible  form,  and  all  that;  and 
33 


AMERICAN   MARRIAGES 

yet  the  fellows  would  all  like  to  do  little 
things  like  that  for  women  —  I  know  I 
should  !  It  seems  as  if  the  girls  were  snub- 
bing one  of  our  most  decent  instincts, 
don't  you  know — but  —  well,  you  see  how 
it  is !  My  mother  always  taught  me  that 
manners  were  but  morals  wearing  their 
best  bonnets  and  gowns." 

Is  it  to  be  wondered  at  that  the  indefin- 
able charm,  the  sacredness  and  mystery  of 
womanhood  are  fast  passing  away  from 
among  us  ?  When  women  themselves  set 
the  standard  of  conduct  lower  down ;  when 
they  consider  it  a  gaucherie  to  blush,  shy- 
ness a  laughable  anachronism,  sentiment 
"sickening  nonsense,"  courtesy  "bad 
form,"  is  it  cause  for  wonder  that  a  few 
months  after  marriage  a  girl  so  often  finds 
her  husband  disillusioned  and  in  an  ugly 
reactionary  mood  ?  Finding  also  herself 
stung  into  a  fury  of  disappointment  and 
resentment  at  his  want  of  that  same  instinc- 
tive tenderness  and  courtesy  which  she  had 
repulsed  before  marriage,  and  which  now, 
34 


AMERICAN    MARRIAGES 

when  it  is  too  late,  she  not  only  longs  for, 
but  demands  ! 

"If  women  thought  less  of  their  own 
souls  and  more  about  men's  tempers, 
marriage  would  n  't  be  what  it  is,"  wrote  a 
recent  feminine  philosopher.  There  are 
several  facts  about  the  masculine  charac- 
ter of  which  women  will  do  well  to  realize 
the  immutability.  It  makes  not  one  par- 
ticle of  difference  what  the  wife  expects 
or  demands  in  marriage,  whether  she  gives 
freely  or  begrudgingly,  if  for  any  reason 
whatsoever  a  man  does  not  find  his  home 
happy,  —  or  at  least  peaceful,  —  whether 
it  be  her  fault  or  his,  —  the  chances  are 
that  he  will  close  his  lips,  put  on  his  hat, 
and  go  his  brutal  way  —  elsewhere!  He 
may  seek  distraction  among  other  men,  in 
a  frenzy  of  work  or  pleasure — and  he 
may  not. 

Of  one  thing  the  young  wife  may  be 
sure,  that  a  man  has  neither  the  instinct 
nor    the    time  to  coddle  his  disappoint- 
ments in   marriage  —  be  puts  on  bis   bat! 
35 


AMERICAN   MARRIAGES 

This  is  his  universal,  silent,  unlabeled  ar- 
gument, that  the  happiness  of  that  home 
is  not  his  business,  but  hers.  If  the  fault 
is  his,  the  brute  expects  patience;  if  it's 
hers,  he  expects  self-control.  If  neither  is 
forthcoming  —  well,  that  is  her  lookout ! 
He  wanted  to  be  happy,  he  expected  it,  or 
else  he  would  not  have  married  her. 

Under  all  of  this  selfish  shunting  of  the 
responsibility  of  home-happiness  on  to 
the  woman's  shoulders,  lies  a  deep  justi- 
fying truth,  —  it  is  her  business,  —  and 
the  fact  that  some  of  nature's  laws,  such 
as  gravitation,  are  at  times  extremely  irri- 
tating, does  not,  however,  make  them  in- 
operative. 

Let  the  fault  be  his  or  hers,  the  main 
source  of  trouble  lies  in  the  undue  devel- 
opment of  youthful  individualism.  That 
the  fault  is  generally  hers,  is  of  course  not 
for  a  moment  implied ;  but  as  the  great 
French  pessimist,  in  a  mild  mood,  sug- 
gests, "  Quarrels  would  not  last  long  if  the 
fault  was  only  on  one  side." 

36 


AMERICAN   MARRIAGES 

/     On  his  side,  nine  times  out  of  ten  in 
t  this  country,  a  man  marries  for  love.  Of 
1  course  he  idealizes  her,  and  is  absolutely 
)  sure  that  she  is  going  to  make  him  happy, 
surely  the  greatest  source  of  peril  to  the 
young  wife  lies  in  the  distorted  vision  of 
her  bridegroom's  eyes,  blinded  by  a  pas- 
sion  for  perfection!   It  would  indeed   be 
heaven  if  love's    lens  were  after  all  the 
only  just  one,  instead  of  being  generally 
the  most  untrue! 

The  man's  motives,  if  selfish,  are  gen- 
erally as  pure  as  are  consistent  with  faulty 
humanity.  At  least  he  considers  them  a 
fair  basis  for  a  happy  marriage ;  and  he 
also  thinks  that,  if  he  stays  true  and 
steadfast  and  sober,  and  clothes  and  feeds 
his  wife,  he  has  done  his  part.  That  he 
wants  to  continue  loving  her  and  being 
beloved,  wants  happiness,  goes  without 
saying ;  was  it  not  nominated  in  the  bond  ? 
He  is  perfectly  amazed  when  some 
strange,  obscure  element  suddenly  intrudes 
and  turns  his,  as  well  as  her,  melody  into 
37 


AMERICAN   MARRIAGES 

discord  ;  blackens  his,  as  well  as  her,  ideal. 
He  is  helpless,  bewildered,  frantic, — 

"  Lest  we  lose  our  Edens, 
Eve  and  I!" 

On  the  young  wife's  part,  she  has  been 
brought  up  in  ignorance  of  a  man's  make- 
up, of  his  latent  brutalities  in  which  is 
rooted  his  very  strength  to  bear  the  bur- 
dens of  life.  Unprepared,  undisciplined, 
uncounseled,  impatient  of  a  less  thing  than 
godhood  itself,  she  often  refuses  even  to 
try  to  adjust  the  yoke  to  her  inexperienced 
shoulders,  and  more  and  more  often  throws 
it  off,  glorying  in  the  assertion  of  her  "  per- 
sistent self."  She  has  not  been  told  that 
perfection  does  not  exist;  that  the  yoke 
of  imperfection  is  laid  on  every  pair  of 
shoulders,  his  as  well  as  hers ;  that  no  wife 
celebrates  her  golden  wedding,  smiling  and 
content  under  her  gray  hair,  who  has  not 
her  secret  history  of  struggle,  bitter  disap- 
pointment, loneliness,  jealousy,  physical 
and  mental  agony.  It  is  safe  to  say  that 

38 


AMERICAN   MARRIAGES 

she  also  did  not  marry  an  angel,  for  the 
very  simple  reason  that  there  are  none  — 
male  or  female  —  in  the  whole  wide  world. 
But  she  was  blessed  with  that  "  passion  of 
great  hearts,"  patience,  and  she  has  been 
victorious  in  the  battle  of  life, —  the  bat- 
tle that  we  are  all  fighting,  every  one ;  not 
this  weeping  wife  here,  nor  that  one  there, 
nursing  her  wrath. 

"It  is  better  to  face  the  fact,  and  know, 
when  you  marry,  that  you  take  into  your 
life  a  creature  of  equal,  if  of  unlike,  frail- 
ties, whose  weak  human  heart  beats  no 
more  tunefully  than  your  own."  The  en- 
gineer of  a  train  must  have  learned  well 
his  business  before  he  is  allowed  to  assume 
the  responsibility  of  the  levers.  How  much 
knowledge  of  the  even  more  complicated 
physical  and  moral  levers  of  marriage  do 
the  average  young  people  bring  to  bear 
upon  their  life-problem  ? 

Happily  many  of  the  colleges  for  wo- 
men have  commenced  to  recognize  the 
wisdom  of  introducing  the  study  of  the 
39 


AMERICAN   MARRIAGES 

family,  and  the  statistics  of  sociology.  It 
would  seem  that  such  a  chair  should  be 
filled  by  a  woman  holding  the  degree  of 
motherhood  and  wifehood,  whatever  else 
she  may  have  picked  up  of  human  know- 
ledge. And  even  then,  with  all  that  un- 
doubtedly could  be  taught  our  young 
women  along  these  lines,  it  is  but  a  pre- 
paration ;  there  is  the  test  ahead  of  them 
all,  when  they  will  need  the  wisdom  that 
only  life  itself  can  slowly  and  painfully 
teach. 

Somewhere  before  the  benediction  of 
the  marriage  ceremony  might  well  be  in- 
serted Amiel's  beautifully  cadenced  words 
to  women  facing  their  great  life-work  : 
"  Never  to  tire,  never  grow  cold ;  to  be  pa- 
tient, sympathetic,  tender ;  to  look  for  the 
budding  flower  and  the  opening  heart; 
to  hope  always ;  like  God  to  love  always, 
—  this  is  duty." 


SOME   FAULTS   OF   AMERICAN 

MEN 


SOME   FAULTS   OF  AMERICAN 

MEN 


"It  is  a  law  of  this  universe,  that  the  best  things  shall 
be  seldomest  seen  in  their  best  form."  —  The  Stones  of 
Venice. 

PERHAPS  it  might  be  more  definitive  to 
speak  of  the  shortcomings  of  American 
men,  of  their  negative  faults.  These  are, 
after  all,  the  specifically  national  ones.  The 
positive  faults  belong  to  the  sex  irrespec- 
tive of  nationality,  and  form  too  large  a 
subject  for  such  small  handling  as  this. 
Furthermore,  ever  since  Moses  selected  a 
negative  phrasing  when  he  hammered  out 
the  ten  great  moral  laws,  the  world,  with 
unconscious  humor,  has  gone  on  listing  a 
man's  virtues  negatively.  We  say  :  he  does 
not  drink ;  he  does  not  gamble ;  he  is 
nothing  of  a  Lovelace.  But  his  faults  re- 
43 


AMERICAN   MEN 

main  positive  :  "  he  is  a  thief,"  we  say,  ra- 
ther than  "  he  is  not  honest,"  which 
somehow  sounds  euphemistic,  and  breeds 
instant  doubtof  the  entire  truth  of  the  state- 
ment. Perhaps,  too,  because  of  their  less 
complex  make-up,  their  tendency  to  fall 
by  themselves  as  it  were,  into  classified 
types,  one  really  gets  a  rough  picture  of 
the  men  thus  negatively  described.  One 
likes  or  dislikes  them  on  even  such  slight 
hearsay. 

And  yet  what  number  of  negations  will 
ever  convey  the  slightest  idea  of  a  wo- 
man? What  availeth  it  to  learn  of  her 
that  she  does  not  drink,  is  not  given  to 
habitual  profanity  ?  Even  when  the  praise 
goes  to  excess,  and  we  learn  that  she  is 
not  a  gadabout,  nor  does  she  throw  any- 
thing large  or  hard  at  her  husband's  head, 
we  are  still  left  in  doubt  concerning  her 
attractiveness  as  a  companion  for  either 
an  hour  or  a  lifetime.  That  a  woman's 
virtues  are  still  summed  up  positively,  in 
face  of  much  internal  opposition  to  sex- 
44 


AMERICAN    MEN 

differentiation  of  any  sort,  is  a  tribute  to 
a  difference  of  standard,  which  she  should 
be  the  last  to  quarrel  with,  had  she  wis- 
dom, instead  of  only  a  little  learning.  It 
also  stands  for  the  woman's  greater  com- 
plexity, in  which  lies  half  of  her  power  in 
the  world.  It  requires  finer  lines  to  limn 
her  as  an  individual. 

So  we  will  keep  (prayerfully!)  to  the  sins 
of  American  masculine  omission. 

To  begin  with  a  caution  bred  of  some 
experience  with  American  complacency, 
it  were  as  well  to  recognize  at  once  that 
geographic  isolation  is  largely  responsible 
for  the  picture  of  supreme  contentment 
with  themselves  which  the  men  of  this 
country  present  to  the  humbled  beholder. 
We  doubtless  have  inherited  some  of  it 
with  our  British  blood,  but  there  still  re- 
mains much  that  is  stamped  in  clear  let- 
tering, "made  in  America."  From  a 
purely  artistic  point  of  view,  it  is  a  pity 
to  try  to  disturb,  even  for  an  instant,  a 
national  pose  so  full  of  boyish  optimism 
45 


AMERICAN   MEN 

in  a  world  largely  given  over  to  unsightly 
regret,  humiliation,  and  despair.  But  as 
it  is  not  yet  universally  admitted  that  the 
foremost  ship  of  the  millennium  has  already 
reached  our  golden  shores,  and  as  a  whole 
nation's  self-illusions  have  been  known  to 
vanish  in  one  day  and  one  night;  and  upon 
the  bare  chance  that  this  may  again  hap- 
pen, either  in  smoke  literal  or  smoke 
metaphorical,  may  not  a  little  of  our  own 
Yankee  farsightedness  be  suggested — and 
pardoned  — once  in  a  way  ? 

This  American  complacency  embraces 
that  citizen  himself,  as  he  sees  himself; 
his  wife  (especially  his  wife)  as  he  sees 
her ;  his  children,  if  perchance  he  takes 
time  to  remember  that  he  has  any ;  his 
system  of  government,  unless  the  ogre 
known  as  the  Other  Party  is  in  power, 
when  the  citizen  is  more  critical;  his 
country  at  large  and  all  that  therein  is, 
from  finance  to  watermelons.  Like  a 
Turk,  he  is  particularly  enamored  of  size 
in  the  harem  of  his  affections. 
46 


AMERICAN    MEN 

"  The  great  quality  of  Dulness  is  to  be 
unalterably  contented  with  itself,"  quoth 
Thackeray  ;  but  he  was  not  writing  of 
American  human  nature,  nor  are  our  men 
in  the  least  dull.  They  have  only  been 
too  long  geographically  removed  from 
any  just  comparison  with  other  civilized 
nations ;  and,  what  is  more  to  the  point, 
too  absorbed  mentally  with  domestic  issues 
to  bridge  the  seas  with  their  minds,  if  not 
with  their  bodily  senses,  to  learn  that 
there  are  other  points  of  view  than  our 
own,  equally  civilized,  if  not  always  more 
"  advanced." 

What  the  busy  American  citizen  sees 
of  those  least  worthy  specimens  of  other 
nations  who  are  so  rashly  welcomed  to 
our  shores,  only  serves  further  to  enhance 
his  own  self-satisfaction.  But  is  not  that 
a  little  like  judging  one's  host  by  spending 
the  evening  in  his  kitchen  ? 

To  offset  in  a  measure  this  mental  pro- 
vincialism, would  it  not  be  possible  to  in- 
troduce in  our  more  advanced  grades,  in 
47 


AMERICAN   MEN 

all  of  our  schools,  the  serious  study  of  the 
criticisms  of  the  United  States  written  by 
the  enlightened  and  just  foreigners  who 
have  not  always  flattered  us  ?  We  are  surely 
in  no  further  exigent  need  of  flattery, 
much  as  our  appetite  remains  childishly 
keen  for  such  sweet  relish.  The  habit  in- 
stilled early  of  standing  back  from  one's 
nation,  and  judging  coolly  between  right 
and  wrong,  wisdom  and  fallacy,  can  hurt 
no  patriotism  worthy  the  name.  "The 
strength  of  criticism  lies  only  in  the  weak- 
ness of  the  thing  criticised,"  said  one  of 
our  own  great  men. 

If  we  wish  to  be  treated  as  a  nation  of 
grown  men  among  the  world's  opposed 
armies  of  men,  there  is  no  better  strategy 
than  to  find  out  exactly  how  our  enemy 
(commercial,  political,  military)  estimates 
us.  There  has  been  more  than  one  great 
general  who  has  found  success  along  that 
line,  and  laid  his  plans  of  offense  or  de- 
fense accordingly.  Surely  the  time  for 
"baby  talk"  has  passed,  young  as  we  still 


AMERICAN   MEN 

obviously  are.  There  are  many  valuable 
books  written  by  clear-sighted  aliens,  crit- 
icising, not  abusing,  us  as  a  people,  so- 
cially, politically,  economically,  which  might 
serve  to  shake  this  dangerous  self-satisfac- 
tion, and  open  young  American  eyes  to 
the  fact  that  perfection  itself  has  not  yet 
quite  been  attained ;  there  remains  much 
to  be  done  before  we  are  what  we  think, 
or  pretend  to  think,  that  we  are.  There  is 
left  a  lot  of  plain,  old-fashioned,  everlast- 
ing human  blundering  going  on  here  in 
the  United  States,  as  well  as  elsewhere  in 
the  world,  now  as  from  the  beginning. 

The  just,  temperate  criticisms  of  our 
want  of  ideality,  of  beauty,  of  repose,  by 
the  great  English  critic  Matthew  Arnold 
(equally  severe  with  his  own  people)  would 
serve  to  clear  the  atmosphere  of  mirage, 
to  give  one  or  two  illustrations  of  what  is 
meant.  The  careful  reading  of  Hugo  Miin- 
sterberg's  estimate  of  us  is  doubly  valua- 
ble :  first,  because  much  of  it  was  not 
primarily  written  for  our  eyes;  second, 
49 


AMERICAN    MEN 

because  it  is  distinctly  sympathetic,  and 
the  Sun  succeeded  in  doing  what  the  Wind 
failed  to  do  in  the  shrewd  old  fable.  One 
of  the  wisest  Americans  of  the  last  half- 
century,  whom  the  writer  had  the  honor 
of  knowing,  once  was  heard  to  reply  to  a 
query :  "  No,  never  read  antagonistic  bio- 
graphy—  it  is  a  pure  waste  of  time!  An 
estimate  to  be  absolutely  just,  must  be  in 
greater  part  sympathetic."  He  went  on  to 
compare  the  value  of  the  first  part  of 
Bourrienne's  "Life  of  Napoleon,"  when 
he  was  in  favor  with  his  master,  with  the  last 
part,  when  Napoleon  no  longer  playfully 
pinched  his  quondam  secretary's  cheeks. 

As  our  average  men  are  admittedly  not 
readers  of  books,  however  many  newspa- 
pers and  magazines  they  may  devour,  the 
writer  proposes  to  quote  and  to  paraphrase, 
for  the  sake  of  brevity,  from  Miinster- 
berg's  "  American  Traits,"  especially  from 
the  chapter  on  "  Education." 


II 

"There  was  never  before  a  nation  that  gave  the 
education  of  the  young  into  the  hands  of  the  lowest 
bidder." — HUGO  MUNSTERBERG. 

THIS  trenchant  sentence  was  written  of 
our  educational  system  within  ten  years. 
It  is  based  upon  the  fact  that  three- fourths 
of  American  education  is  in  the  hands  of 
women,  who  are  able  to  underbid  the  men 
by  the  very  conditions  of  their  being.  Few 
of  them  are — what  the  average  man  is 
when  he  has  reached  the  age  when  he  is 
fitted  to  teach  —  the  sole  supporters  of 
growing  families;  and  hence  they  are  will- 
ing to  work  for  smaller  salaries,  thereby 
slowly  driving  the  men  from  teaching  as 
a  paying  profession.  It  was  the  business 
of  male  teachers  to  remain  in  the  ranks 
and  keep  there  their  dominance,  as  in 
other  nations  which  have  grown  great.  If 
there  were  nothing  more  vital  to  the  com- 
monwealth than  the  distribution  of  the 


AMERICAN   MEN 

$200,000,000  yearly  spent  in  education  in 
this  country,  then  perhaps  we  might  read- 
ily comprehend  and  sympathize  with  the 
present  attitude  toward  this  serious  matter. 
But  to  make  that  very  secondary  question 
the  prime  consideration  is  to  lose  sight 
altogether  of  the  object  of  this  vast  ex- 
penditure. 

Surely  it  is  not  to  furnish  honest  sup- 
port to  a  given  number  of  needy  women 
(worthy  as  that  plea  may  be),  women  who 
have  their  full  share  of  American  snob- 
bishness about  working  with  their  hands 
as  a  means  of  support.  Is  not  the  real  ob- 
ject to  get  the  best,  broadest,  sanest  teach- 
ers for  the  children  of  the  nation  ? 

A  civilization  is  indeed  crude  that  is  all 
eyes  for  the  salary, with  only  a  side-glance 
for  the  work  to  be  performed  in  return. 

Our  distribution  of  the  salaries  of 
teachers  in  this  country  simply  places  a 
premium  on  the  celibate  spirit,  exactly  as 
Rome  has  for  centuries.  As  a  result,  Italy 
to-day  has  difficulty  in  rinding  men  to  do 
52 


AMERICAN   MEN 

her  work.  Some  day  we  may  be  in  equal 
need  of  men  to  be  what  men  ought  to  be 
—  the  social  backbone  of  the  nation  in 
all  the  ramifications  of  what  is  called  civi- 
lization. 

It  is  into  the  female  celibate  hands  that 
our  men  have  suffered  the  greater  part  of 
the  education  of  their  children  to  drift.  It 
is  a  note  of  warning  to  our  civilization, 
that  cannot  be  too  often  repeated,  this 
rapid  "womanizing,"  as  Miinsterberg  calls 
it,  of  almost  the  entire  education  of  the 
American  youth. 

Is  this  complete  boukversement  of  sex- 
conditions  so  very  much  nearer  the  wise 
economic  balance  kept  by  the  older  nations 
of  civilized  Europe  than  the  Eastern  condi- 
tions where  the  men  draw  the  curtains  of 
the  harem  across  all  such  vexing  questions? 
Are  our  own  men,  after  all,  driven  by 
overwork  rather  than  by  their  senses, 
slowly  reverting  to  that  convenient  condi- 
tion of  home  affairs :  "I  haven't  time,  go 
ask  your  mother"?  If  that  sentence  was 
53 


AMERICAN   MEN 

overheard  anywhere  on  earth,  would  the 
speaker's  nationality  remain  long  in  doubt, 
however  free  from  colloquialism  his  ac- 
cent ? 

That  young  American  women  stand 
abreast  of  men,  even  very  often  ahead  of 
them,  in  college  work,  represents  nothing 
important  save  to  the  most  superficial 
vision.  It  simply  stamps  the  nature  of 
that  work  in  American  colleges.  Nor  does 
the  fact  that  women  make  apparently  good 
teachers  settle  the  question  satisfactorily. 
As  our  German  critic  gently  puts  it: 
"  The  work,  which  in  all  other  civilized 
countries  is  done  by  men,  cannot  in  the 
United  States  be  slipped  into  the  hands 
of  women  without  being  profoundly  al- 
tered in  character."  And  again:  "If  the 
entire  culture  of  the  nation  is  womanized, 
it  will  be  in  the  end  weak  and  without 
decisive  influence  on  the  progress  of  the 
world." 

No  poetical  claim  of  idealizing  their 
women,  of  having  the  utmost  confidence 
54 


AMERICAN   MEN 

in  their  judgment,  will  remove  from 
American  men  the  plain  stigma  of  shirking 
the  burdens  borne  by  the  men  of  all  other 
civilized  peoples;  shirking  them  for  what, 
up  to  the  present  time,  have  seemed  to 
them  of  more  importance — questions  of 
government  and  of  the  practical  develop- 
ment of  primitive  conditions.  And  yet  it 
was  Wendell  Phillips  who  wrote,  "  Edu- 
cation is  the  only  interest  worthy  of  the 
deep,  controlling  anxiety  of  the  thought- 
ful man." 

As  the  future  of  our  republic  is  rooted 
in  the  average  intelligence  of  the  people, 
it  is  difficult  to  watch  with  patience  the 
turning  over  of  the  mental  training  of  our 
children  to  a  sex  profoundly  dominated 
by  the  emotions. 

Even  a  young  and  daring  nation  can- 
not fight  the  laws  of  nature,  and  "  Nature 
cannot  be  dodged."  She  makes  always 
for  differentiation  of  function,  not  for 
empty  repetitions  of  potentiality  among 
species.  The  man  has  his,  the  woman 
55 


AMERICAN   MEN 

hers,  and  our  faulty  system  of  education 
calls  aloud  for  man's  reinstated  attention, 
his  profoundest  thought. 

In  this  country, "  the  whole  higher  cult- 
ure is  feminized."  Eighty-five  per  cent 
of  the  patrons  of  theatres  are  women,  says 
our  critic.  Women  are  the  readers  of  our 
books,  they  make  up  an  American  audi- 
ence at  public  lectures,  concerts.  They  con- 
trol our  charities  and  church  work.  In 
Europe  at  least  one-half  of  the  people 
present  at  an  art  exhibition  are  men;  in 
this  country  one  sees  less  than  five  per 
centum  of  men  present  at  such  an  exhibi- 
tion, by  actual  count.  The  germ  of  femi- 
nization  is  firmly  planted  in  the  whole 
national  intellectuality,  until  now  woman 
has  the  practical  monopoly.  The  purely 
native  resources  of  our  nation  and  our 
politics  remain  in  the  hands  of  men;  — 
it  is  about  all  they  have  retained,  and  the 
suffragists  begrudge  them  even  that. 


Ill 

THE  responsibility  for  the  present  hu- 
miliating slave-trade  in  which  rich  Amer- 
ican girls  are  sold  to  the  titled  decadents 
of  England  and  the  Continent  is  almost 
wholly  the  fault  of  the  men  of  this  country. 
This  opinion  is  offered  only  after  years 
of  observation  and  consideration  of  our 
social  conditions,  and  after  a  pathological 
study  of  American  men.  Their  open  as- 
tonishment and  chagrin  at  this  phenome- 
non would  be  vastly  amusing  were  it  not 
so  pathetic.  Our  men  have  a  helpless  in- 
ability to  see  themselves.  Nor  is  the  re- 
sponsibility of  the  mother  lost  sight  of, 
for  the  foreign  suitor  begins  with  her,  as 
he  does  in  Europe.  She  is  the  outer  cita- 
del which  must  first  succumb  to  his  studied 
charm. 

This  outer  citadel  is  carried  with  aston- 
ishing ease,  as   he  quickly  discovers,  and 
for  three  reasons.  The  mother  is  easily 
57 


AMERICAN   MEN 

dazzled;  her  social  foundations  do  not  go 
down  deep  in  the  class  to  which  she  al- 
most invariably  belongs ;  her  husband  has 
made  every  dollar  of  the  lure  of  those 
millions,  without  which  there  would  not 
be  this  problem  to  solve.  Second,  the  wo- 
men who  see  what  a  given  man  really  is, 
who  estimate  him  at  all  justly,  who  begin 
even  to  understand  men's  social  standards 
in  this  country  or  in  Europe,  are  rare  in- 
deed. The  American  mother  is  clearly 
out  of  her  depth  at  the  start,  as  unfit  as  a 
child  to  counsel  her  daughter.  She  is  not 
equipped  for  it.  It  is  not  her  work.  In 
the  third  place,  that  subtle  relationship  of 
sex  which  European  men  of  any  age  al- 
ways have  the  art  of  establishing  with  a 
woman  of  whatever  age :  their  attention, 
their  quick  courtesy  toward  women,  their 
habit  of  listening  absorbedly  when  a  wo- 
man speaks, —  all  this  is  so  absolutely 
new  to  the  American  mother  that  she  be- 
comes hypnotized  by  it,  and  can  no  longer 
distinguish  truth  from  falsity,  or  a  mere 
58 


AMERICAN    MEN 

national  point  of  etiquette  from  a  personal 
thouglitfulness  and  delicate  tenderness  of 
feeling. 

She,  poor  soul,  at  the  age  most  sensi- 
tive to  flattery,  is  hungry  for  a  little  con- 
sideration. When  it  comes  from  this  for- 
eigner, unhappily  there  has  been  nothing 
in  her  past  like  it  to  help  her  to  see  through 
it  to  its  core.  On  the  contrary,  she  has 
been  so  long  used  to  being  treated  as  a 
social  incumbrance,  snubbed,  interrupted, 
unconsidered  by  all  of  her  daughter's  do- 
mestic suitors,  that  to  separate  principles 
from  manners,  without  the  aid  of  her  hus- 
band, who  "  leaves  it  all  to  her,"  in  the 
old,  honored  American  way,  is  to  demand 
impossibilities  of  her. 

And  he,  the  father?  He  is  so  used  to 
the  bees  flying  to  and  fro  about  his  flower, 
he  is  so  absolutely  absorbed  body  and 
soul  in  his  work,  he  has  for  so  long 
shunted  all  such  things  off  on  his  wife, 
that  he  only  wakes  up  and  "gets  mad," 
as  the  saying  is,  when  it  is  too  late. 
59 


AMERICAN  MEN 

Then  the  astonishment  of  the  thought- 
less father  and  the  selfish  brother  and  the 
discarded,  discourteous  American  suitor, 
are  about  equally  divided.  Any  concep- 
tion that  they  are  in  any  way  responsible 
for  it,  never  enters  their  minds.  The 
mother  is  unjustly  blamed  for  the  whole 
thing.  Nor  do  they  withhold  the  "  I  told 
you  so,"  when  the  cruel  ending  comes,  as 
it  so  often  does.  As  if  any  mother,  even 
a  parvenue  American,  would  have  encour- 
aged the  suit  of  the  foreigner,  if  she  had 
not  erred  in  her  judgment  of  men. 

After  all,  though  the  United  States  may 
be  the  girl's  paradise,  it  distinctly  is  not  the 
mother's.  For  she  must  carry  the  load  alone, 
all  but  the  monetary  providing, — alone 
from  the  day  of  the  child's  birth  to  the  day 
her  boy  kisses  her  lightly  good-by,  and  goes 
on  his  way  which  she  alone,  not  his  weary, 
absent-minded  father,  helped  him  to  select. 

She  carries  her  daughter,  from  baby- 
hood, through  all  of  her  school-life  (what 
number  of  American  fathers  know  even 
60 


;AMERICAN  MEN 

the  name  of  their  daughters'  day-schools, 
or  had  any  part  in  the  selection?)  to  the 
day  when  she  too,  unterrified  through  ig- 
norance, opens  the  door  of  her  own  life 
and  goes  out  hand-in-hand  with  some  un- 
known man.  More  than  one  American 
mother  has  told  the  writer  of  her  weariness 
in  struggling  alone  with  such  responsibil- 
ities,—  "a  mother  and  yet  husbandless." 
The  American  masculine  claim  of  ab- 
sorption in  his  work  does  not  in  the  least 
justify  such  a  condition.  Frenchmen  sup- 
port their  wives  and  still  find  time  to  go 
shopping  with  them  too  !  Englishmen  do 
likewise,  and  find  energy  left  to  place  their 
sons  in  school,  energy  to  watch  keenly  the 
love-affairs  of  their  daughters,  unhesita- 
tingly bidding  this  or  that  man  be  gone  ; 
moral  courage  and  physical  vitality  left 
after  the  day's  work  to  be  in  fact,  as  well 
as  in  fancy,  "  the  head  of  the  house." 
They  have  the  wisdom  to  leave  hours  for 
play,  for  pure  boyishness  of  living.  And 
all  this  may  be  observed  in  the  same  middle 
61 


AMERICAN    MEN 

class  that  with  us  turns  the  whole  issue  over 
to  the  wife,  expecting  of  her  all  wisdom, 
though  knowing  her  sheltered  youth  ;  and 
all  vitality,  to  run  unceasingly  and  unaided 
the  whole  machinery  of  the  family.  No 
wonder  our  women  have  "  nerves " !  No 
wonder  they  are  becoming  more  and  more 
restless  (one  of  the  first  evidences  of  strain), 
more  and  more  discontented  as  time  passes. 
Masculine  kindness  to  our  women  is  some- 
times so  tangled  up  with  selfishness  that 
there  need  be  no  surprise  that  there  is  some 
confusion  regarding  them. 

Not  that  our  men  want  the  money,  after 
which  they  are  striving,  for  themselves, 
for  their  pleasures.  They  do  not.  They 
are  almost  notoriously  generous.  Our  rich 
men  give,  give,  give :  to  their  wives,  their 
children,  to  colleges,  to  hospitals,  to 
churches,  until  the  whole  world  is  amazed 
at  their  generosity. 

The  habit  and  fury  of  work,  unreason- 
ing, illogical,  quite  unrelated  to  any  need, 
is  a  masculine  disease  in  this  country,  and 
62 


AMERICAN  MEN 

the  whole  social  system  has  for  years  paid 
the  inevitable  penalty.  Here  and  there  a 
man  tries  to  stop  in  time,  but  finds  him- 
self obsessed  by  work  so  that  he  can  no 
longer  think  of  anything  else.  He  is  as 
much  a  slave  to  it  as  is  any  opium-taker  to 
his  drug,  or  drunkard  to  his  potion.  It  is 
a  grave  danger,  not  only  to  the  individual, 
but  to  the  whole  American  civilization. 

The  young  Americans  too,  who  are  so 
contemptuous  about  our  girls'  preference 
for  foreigners,  must  look  to  themselves  and 
their  shortcomings  for  some  of  the  cause, 
and  must,  with  the  older  men,  share  the 
responsibility  for  it.  In  the  first  place,  our 
young  men  are  not  good  lovers,  however 
in  the  end  they  may  be  good  husbands. 
And  what  girl  of  twenty  has  the  foresight 
to  comprehend  that  ? 

If  she  has  that  foresight  she  is  simply 
not  "  in  love,"  as  the  phrase  goes,  —  and 
alas  !  it  takes  so  much  love  to  carry  a 
woman,  any  woman,  through  the  tremen- 
dous strain  of  marriage.  A  very  necessary 


AMERICAN  MEN 

and  a  very  wise  foresight  is  not  natural 
in  any  maiden,  and  that  is  one  of  the  solid 
advantages  of  the  European  system,  at 
which  we  so  glibly  sneer. 

The  difference  in  the  divorce  records  of 
Europe  and  the  United  States  is  not  all  to 
the  credit  of  any  church.  Where  the  head 
dominates  the  heart,  the  results  show  in 
the  long  run  in  marriage  as  well  as  in  any 
other  undertaking.  The  over-sentimental- 
ism  in  all  such  matters  with  us  carries  with 
it  the  gravest  of  dangers.  We  expect  our 
girls  to  "fall  in  love  "  and  at  the  same  time 
be  their  own  cool-headed  chaperones;  girls 
from  whom  we  carefully  hide  the  living 
truth.  Is  there  logic  in  that?  The  opinion 
(which  has  been  held  for  some  twenty  years) 
is  ventured  that  the  purely  temperamental 
difference  between  American  men  and 
those  of  England  and  the  Continent,  is  at 
the  bottom  of  the  freedom  we  have  found 
it  safe  to  accord  our  girls.  The  latter  are 
not  so  intrinsically  impeccable,  but  the  for- 
mer are  by  nature  temperamentally  cold,  a 
64 


AMERICAN   MEN 

condition  perhaps  due  to  several  genera- 
tions of  overstraining. 

No  sensitive  woman  can  be  in  Europe 
a  single  day  without  recognizing  this  fact 
beyond  all  caviling.  No  man  save  a  trained 
psychologist  would  recognize  this  patho- 
logical fact,  of  which  hundreds  of  average 
American  women-travelers  have  spoken  to 
the  writer,  from  girls  of  seventeen  to  women 
of  fifty.  "  We  women  count  for  so  much 
more  over  there,  don't  we? "  is  very  often 
the  way  it  is  put. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  leisure  of  our  wo- 
men, their  coddling,  their  luxury  of  living, 
has  developed  them  along  exactly  opposite 
lines.  May  not  this  growing  temperamental 
difference  account  for  some  of  the  tenden- 
cies in  our  civilization  that  seem  obscure  ? 

Our  young  men  lean  back  and  compla- 
cently argue  that,  as  their  hands  and  hearts 
are  clean,  and  as  all  other  men  are  rascals, 
in  greater  or  less  degree,  they  should  be 
of  course  preferred.  Have  they  gone  no 
deeper  into  the  question  than  that  ?  Would 
65 


AMERICAN   MEN 

Thisbe  have  cared  as  ardently  for  Pyramus 
if  the  Wall  had  not  been  there  ? 

Who  carry  flowers,  jellies,  books,  sym- 
pathy to  criminals,  however  hideous  their 
crimes,  but  the  women  ?  The  ill-regulated, 
unreasoning  emotionality  of  a  large  num- 
ber of  our  women  is  not  to  be  overesti- 
mated in  determining  any  question  apper- 
taining to  them.  Women's  Rights  women, 
—  so-called,—  who  naturally  affiliate  one 
with  another,  may  shudder  and  laugh  de- 
risively to  their  heart's  content,  but  the 
truth  is  unassailable,  that  worth  has  not 
yet  succeeded  in  deciding  the  love-affairs 
of  either  sex.  Men  are  in  no  greater  de- 
gree attracted  by  the  gentle,  well-balanced, 
womanly  girls,  who  would  make  excellent 
wives,  than  the  latter  by  the  honest,  disin- 
terested, temperate,  clean-hearted  men.  If 
men  and  women  did  make  wise  selections 
the  villains  would  be  at  hand.  Other  mat- 
ters decide  such  problems.  The  question 
of  brilliancy  of  plumage  is  not  so  far  behind 
us  humans  that  it  no  longer  counts.  Our 
66 


AMERICAN   MEN 

college  men  study  these  matters,  but  fail 
to  make  the  atavistic  analogy  when  it  comes 
to  social  matters  in  their  later  lives.  Hence 
their  profane  rage  at  the  girls  when  for- 
eigners come  fortune-hunting. 

If  the  truth  were  told,  most  young  Ameri- 
can men  are  not  especially  interesting.  They 
do  not  keep  up  their  reading.  They  have  a 
national  obtundity  when  it  comes  to  music, 
to  art,  to  literature  ;  nor  do  many  of  them 
take  any  of  these  things  at  all  seriously. 
The  young  among  them  are  not  good 
conversationalists.  Our  cleverest  men  are 
monologists  pure  and  simple.  They  lecture 
admirably.  They  are  born  orators  along 
modified  lines.  They  are  inevitable  story- 
tellers. None  of  this  is  conversation ;  and 
women  like  conversation,  like  its  courtesies, 
which  at  least  pretend  a  little  interest  when 
their  turn  comes  in  the  game.  Knowledge 
of  people  and  affairs  outside  our  own  coun- 
try pricks  more  than  one  bubble  about  our 
young  men. 

Tired  men  fill  our  vaudeville  theatres, — 

67 


AMERICAN   MEN 

for  thereat  least  the  audience  is  largely  mas- 
culine,—  even  in  the  daytime.  They  are 
too  near  exhaustion  to  do  more  than  listen 
to  wit  quite  easy  of  comprehension.  Our 
girls  are  accustomed  to  amusing  these 
tired  men.  That  joy  of  being  amused,  of 
being  interested  by  a  man  of  the  world, 
is  not  to  be  omitted  in  any  just  weighing 
of  the  question  why  they  find  foreigners 
attractive;  and  as  time  passes,  in  spite  of 
all  the  bitter  disillusionments  of  the  past, 
our  rich  girls  will  make  more  and  more 
unflattering  selections  from  among  suitors 
from  across  the  seas.  And  it  is  full  time 
our  young  men  awakened  to  their  own 
share  in  the  causes  which  lead  to  such  a 
condition.  The  whole  social  system  of  Eng- 
land and  of  Europe  generally  spares  a  girl 
such  shameful  sales.  The  mothers,  the  fa- 
thers, the  men  about  her,  are  equipped  to 
protect  her,  and  they  take  the  time  and  spare 
the  energy  to  do  so.  Justly  considered, 
it  is  a  social,  psychic  question,  quite  apart 
from  man's  commercial  value  in  the  world. 


WHY   AMERICAN   MOTHERS 
FAIL 


WHY  AMERICAN   MOTHERS 
FAIL 

"You  wish,  O  woman,  to  be  ardently  loved,  and 
forever,  even  till  death  !  Be,  then,  the  mother  of  your 
children."  —  "  LEVANA." 

MOTHERS  are  the  gardeners  of  the  human 
race.  There  is  no  office  under  the  divine 
government  that  approaches  theirs,  be- 
cause none  other  is  so  closely  allied  to  it. 

Any  system  of  education  that  fails  to 
impress  upon  our  girls  the  immense  civic 
value  of  motherhood,  its  imposing  dig- 
nity, its  grave  responsibilities  to  the  state 
itself,  fails  of  its  purpose.  Any  system  of 
education  in  our  republic  that  does  not 
instill,  from  the  start,  into  an  American 
boy,  the  fact  that  this  government  is 
rooted  in  his  vote  and  that  of  his  com- 
rades, fails  doubly  of  its  purpose. 

Our  much-vaunted  public-school  sys- 
71 


AMERICAN   MOTHERS 

tern,  which  we  shake  like  a  banderole  in 
the  face  of  Europe,  does  neither  of  these 
things ;  or  rather,  it  does  the  former  not 
at  all,  and  the  latter  most  perfunctorily  and 
inadequately. 

The  reason  that  girls  are  not  taught 
the  dignity  of  motherhood  is  only  too  ob- 
vious :  it  is  but  the  usual  crude,  shame- 
faced American  way  of  totally  ignoring 
the  wholesome  primal  elements  of  human 
life.  Our  schools  shirk  the  responsibility 
by  claiming  that  such  counsel  should  come 
from  mothers.  And  the  mothers  are  rare 
indeed  who  do  not  ignore,  generation  after 
generation,  this  fundamental  problem. 

Between  the  two  negligences  girls  prac- 
tically are  never  given  this  larger  point  of 
view,  which  would  be  good  not  only  for 
the  state,  but  also  for  their  own  personal 
uplift  above  that  sense  of  personal  failure 
that  so  often  comes  to  us  all. 

The  boys  are  not  inoculated  with  the 
germ  of  citizenship  because  their  educa- 
tion is  too  often  left  in  the  hands  of  rou- 


AMERICAN   MOTHERS 

tine  teachers  totally  incapable  of  any  large 
outlook  upon  life,  or  else  of  those  whose 
hands  are  tied  by  convention.  Again,  nei- 
ther parents  nor  schools  do  their  duty  by 
the  boy  any  more  than  by  the  girl.  There 
are  no  state  or  federal  laws  to  force  recog- 
nition of  such  vital  questions ;  to  direct, 
at  once,  the  hearing  of  American  boys  and 
girls  to  that  deep  national  note  that  would 
bind  them  to  life's  bigger  harmonies,  to 
those  larger  relationships  of  the  individual 
to  government  and  society.  These  two 
sentiments  alone,  thoroughly  instilled  in  the 
flexible  minds  and  hearts  of  our  young 
people,  would,  later  on,  stay  many  a  hand 
bent  on  the  social  suicide  of  divorce;  and 
also  in  two  generations  would  begin  to 
make  for  good  in  the  world  of  politics. 

Unfortunately,  educational  legislation  is 
slow  to  recognize  its  own  shortcomings, 
slower  still  to  rectify  them.  American  men, 
as  a  whole,  are  as  strangely  weak  and  in- 
vertebrate in  their  relations  to  their  chil- 
dren as  they  are  in  their  relations  to  their 
73 


AMERICAN    MOTHERS 

wives.  The  quicker  remedy  lies  there.  But 
only  a  riper,  sounder  civilization,  with 
enlarged  vision,  will  see  its  utmost  needs, 
and  make  its  demands. 

So,  after  all,  it  is  to  the  mothers  one 
must  speak  with  lowered  voice:  to  the 
gardeners,  some  wise  and  some  unwise ; 
some  patient  and  some  restless;  the  strong 
of  vision,  and  the  near-sighted  gardeners, 
working  among  the  human  seedlings  and 
young  plants  in  the  great  garden  called 
Society. 

Fathers  are  seldom  more  than  the  flo- 
rists connected  with  the  hothouses.  They 
deal  almost  solely  with  effects;  after  the 
mothers  have  done,  well  or  ill,  the  work 
down  in  the  dark  under  the  blossoming 
plant,  digging  sometimes  very  blindly 
among  the  twisted  roots  of  cause. 

So  it  has  come  about  that,  when  the 
young  children  in  her  care  grow  awry,  we 
inquire  of  the  mother  and  her  methods; 
just  as  we  bespeak  the  truck-gardener 
when  our  vegetables  are  amiss,  or  a  horse- 
74 


AMERICAN    MOTHERS 

breeder  when  our  cattle  breed  down  along 
degenerate  lines. 

A  successful  mother  (fighting  both  he- 
redity and  individual  bias)  is  a  more  im- 
portant factor  in  a  municipality  than  any 
merely  successful  man  in  it;  much  more 
important,  were  she  but  made  to  realize  it. 
For  motherhood  is  a  thing  apart,  "  a  dis- 
tinct and  individual  creation;  different 
from  anything  else  God  ever  thought  of," 
said,  in  all  reverence,  an  American  preacher. 
Her  position  has  in  it  all  the  tragedy  of 
lifelong  isolation  in  the  performance  of 
her  work;  all  the  pathos  of  vast  expendi- 
ture of  vitality  with  no  personal  reward. 
The  millionaire  railroad  official,  once  an 
office-boy,  gets  his  reward  for  tremendous 
Iab0r,  in  power  and  money ;  the  scientist 
gets  his  in  the  world's  recognition  of  his 
accomplished  work.  The  mother's  reward 
is  spiritual,  and  lies  only  in  the  work  itself, 
for  she  has  not  the  stimulus  of  an  audi- 
ence, and  few  indeed  are  the  children  who 
v  recognize  their  mother's  struggles,  their 
75 


AMERICAN    MOTHERS 

mothers  sacrifices.  As  to  her  love,  they 
accept  it  as  they  do  the  air  they  breathe; 
and  who  of  us  stops  to  thank  Oxygen  and 
Nitrogen  for  combining  so  conveniently 
for  our  benefit  ? 

All  of  this  purposely  leaves  out  the 
mother's  emotional  reward,  for  reasons 
that  will  appear  later.  Much  more  impor- 
tant than  any  matter  of  sentiment  is  it  that 
she  should  learn  that  she  is  doing  some- 
thing for  her  country,  apart  from  all  the 
very  best  efforts  of  man.  It  would  not  be 
amiss  if  in  every  home  one  found  this 
sentence  of  Phillips  Brooks's,  illuminated, 
and  hung  well  "on  the  line":  "No  man 
has  come  to  true  greatness  who  has  not 
felt,  in  some  degree,  that  his  life  belongs  to 
his  race,  and  that  what  God  gives  him  He 
gives  him  for  mankind." 

There  is  a  pathetic  hopelessness  about 
many  mothers.  One  so  often  hears  them 
wearily  say,  "  I  Ve  given  up  my  whole  life 
for  years  to  my  children,  and  yet  it  seems 
to  have  failed.  They  are  not  as  I  meant 
76 


AMERICAN    MOTHERS 

them  to  be,  nor  as  I  hoped  that  they 
would  be.  What  is  wrong?  I  wish  some- 
one would  help  me." 

It  is  suggested,  in  all  humility  and  ten- 
derness, that  there  are  several  things  go- 
ing amiss  in  the  human  garden.  In  the 
first  place,  it  takes  something  besides  fem- 
inine hearts  to  manage  men  and  the  off- 
spring of  men ;  it  takes  feminine  brains, 
every  wisdom-tipped  arrow  in  a  woman's 
quiver.  Nine  times  out  of  ten,  women 
put  too  much  emotion,  and  not  enough 
judgment,  into  both  wifehood  and  mother- 
hood. Everything  has  combined  for  cen- 
turies to  bring  this  about.  Much  of  the 
discontent  of  the  present  day  among 

/  women  is  based  on  the  fact  that  they  do 
not  yet  realize  that  their  life-tasks  are  not 
properly  merely  emotional  at  all,  but  pre- 

'  eminently  intellectual.  It  is  safe  to  say 
that  if  a  woman  finds  that  her  life  makes 
no  use  of  her  intellect,  she  is  a  bad  house- 
keeper, a  poor  wife,  a  poorer  mother,  a 
useless  citizen. 

77 


AMERICAN    MOTHERS 

The  best  wives  and  mothers  manage  to 
preserve  a  certain  mental  aloofness  from 
their  husbands  and  children,  the  better  to 
estimate  with  justice  the  task  ahead.  It  is 
precisely  that  faculty  which  differentiates 
a  woman  from  a  tigress,  whose  mere  emo- 
tion, considered  by  itself,  in  both  relation- 
ships is  no  different  in  kind  from  the 
woman's  own.  Qne  can  count  so  abso- 
lutely upon  the  basic  emotionality  of 
women,  that  a  deal  of  excision  will  still 
leave  an  abundance  for  the  joy  of  man 
and  his  everlasting  bewilderment.  The 
whole  present  tendency  in  life  is  to  the 
over-development  of  emotion  among  men, 
women,  and  especially  children;  and  little 
or  nothing  is  done  to  keep  it  in  its  proper 
proportion.  As  sentiment  has  been  dying 
out  in  modern  life,  its  place  seems  to  be 
taken  by  nerve  excitation ;  by  a  craving 
for  agitation  of  any  sort. 

The  present  madness  for  speed  over  the 
seas,  through  the  air,  through  the  solid 
earth  itself,  unduly  develops  a  sort  of  pleas- 
78 


AMERICAN   MOTHERS 

urable  trepidation  among  adults;  as  those 
so-called  "amusements"  at  "resorts"  both 
terrify  and  fascinate  the  unfortunate  chil- 
dren who  are  allowed  to  flock  to  them.  The 
hourly  intrusion  of  news  racks  our  nerves. 
It  is  the  opium  of  this  generation  which  we 
cannot  long  remain  without.  That  hitherto 
restful  week  at  sea,  upon  which  overtaxed 
men  and  women  could  once  count  in  sim- 
pler, slower  times,  is  being  taken  from  us 
forever. 

Music  is  becoming  more  and  more  emo- 
tional as  time  passes.  In  the  drama  surely 
Sardou  and  Ibsen  take  more  out  of  their 
auditors  than  even  Shakespeare  ever  did. 
A  novel  must  leave  a  man  breathless,  or 
he  is  bored;  so,  too,  an  afternoon  drive. 
Winged  Mercury  is  the  god  of  the  hour. 
A  bit  of  a  rascal,  to  be  sure,  but  he  "gets 
there"!  There  is  no  peace  to  be  had,  no 
restful  slow-sipping  of  life  that  once  satis- 
fied our  strong-nerved  forefathers. 

Woman  has  but  drifted  with  the  rush- 
ing current.  Her  wifehood  is  generally 
79 


AMERICAN   MOTHERS 

measured  by  the  yardstick  of  her  pleasura- 
ble emotions;  her  motherhood  very  often 
by  a  series  of  passionate  instincts  which  are 
allowed  full  sway,  as  if  representing  directly 
the  word  of  God  in  a  household.  What  is 
really  needed  to  precipitate  both  peace  and 
progress  is,  not  the  elimination,  but  the 
firm  control  of  emotion  and  instinct,  by 
cool  deliberate  feminine  wisdom  —  all  of 
that  which  should  have  been  transmitted 
to  her  before  marriage  and  motherhood, 
and  all  that  she  has  herself  since  discovered. 

Marriage  and  motherhood  still  come  into 
a  girl's  life,  even  in  this  materialistic  country 
of  ours,  in  a  succession  of  blinding  emo- 
tional flashes,  standing  vividly  out  against 
the  dark  sky  of  utter  ignorance.  She  is  left 
bewildered,  groping  in  the  dark  thereafter, 
feeling  about  her  nothing  stable,  but  only 
more,  and  more,  and  ever  more  —  emo- 
tions ! 

Ignorant  of  her  subject,  criminally  un- 
prepared, her  children  are  often  a  mere 
series  of  unsuccessful  experiments,  which 
80 


AMERICAN   MOTHERS 

she  tries,  rather  frantically,  one  after  an- 
other, as  each  child  presents  new  problems. 
For  Nature  has  a  trait  which  greatly  com- 
plicates a  mother's  work :  a  mysterious  pas- 
sion for  seemingly  useless  differentiation 
within  a  given  species.  This  forces  the 
mother  both  to  pass  new  laws  and  to  con- 
stantly revise  old  laws  in  her  government 
code. 

"Human  experience,  like  the  stern-lights 
of  a  ship  at  sea,  illumines  only  the  path 
which  we  have  passed  over."  It  is  the 
searchlights  for  which  we  are  pleading. 

If  a  mother  would  but  strive  to  put  less 
heart  into  it  all,  and  more  mind!  If  she 
would  but  look  with  wide-open  eyes  and 
say  to  herself,  "I  will  make  the  care  of  my 
children  an  intellectual  task.  I  '11  put  into 
it  what  brains  I  have,  as  I  used  once  to  do 
into  literary,  philanthropic,  or  social  mat- 
ters. This  is  the  most  important  of  all,  for 
it  embraces  everything  else.  It 's  not  a  mere 
question  of  alternating  love  and  tears,  fierce 
pride  and  frantic  despair." 
81 


AMERICAN    MOTHERS 

Her  duties  in  the  garden  are  three:  i. 
Watering  the  seeds.  2.  Pruning  the  young 
growing  plants.  3.  Killing  the  offending 
insects  at  the  blossoming  time.  And  ever 
and  always  weeding  is  to  be  done,  from  the 
early  spring  till  the  snow  comes. 


I 

THE    SEEDS 

ON  the  whole,  too  much  time  is  given 
by  an  American  mother  to  a  child  in  its 
infancy,  between  the  first  and  the  third 
year;  too  little  time  from  the  fourth  to  the 
tenth  year ;  and  after  that  she  allows  others' 
opinions,  much  too  often,  to  dominate  her 
own  in  both  the  mental  and  the  moral  de- 
velopment of  her  family.  She  has  come  to 
think  that  the  task  is  no  longer  hers. 

Thus  it  has  come  about  that  education 
has  so  largely  become  the  cumbersome  con- 
vention that  it  undoubtedly  is.  The  fathers 
in  the  United  States  leave  it  to  the  mothers ; 
the  mothers  leave  it  to  the  schools;  the 
schools,  public  or  private,  are  generally  in 
the  hands  of  narrow  specialists,  "common- 
schooled  and  uncultivated/'  in  the  sense 
that "  culture  looks  beyond  machinery,"  as 
Matthew  Arnold  said  of  us.  So  many  par- 

83 


AMERICAN   MOTHERS 

ents  feed  their  children  blindly  into  the  edu- 
cational hopper,  and  then  walk  to  the  spout 
at  the  other  end  to  receive  unquestioned 
the  "finished"  product.  Schools  override 
the  mother's  own  intelligent  convictions; 
Sunday  schools  take  the  place,  and  most  in- 
adequately, of  her  own  sense  of  morality. 

Nothing  of  this  is  as  it  should  be.  If  a 
mother  ever  sinks  into  the  background  of 
her  child's  life  she  has  no  one  to  blame  for 
it  but  herself.  She  has  not  risen  to  the  task, 
that 's  all.  Love  has  not  proved  itself  every- 
thing in  the  solution  of  her  problem.  She 
can  supplement  the  crudities  of  the  child's 
mental  schooling,  and  should  leave  Sunday 
schools  for  the  motherless.  No  one  can 
know,  as  she  does,  the  weak  spots  in  her 
offspring's  character. 

The  love-madness  of  a  young  mother  for 
her  tiny  infant,  poetical  and  picturesque  as 
it  is,  is  harmful  in  many  ways.  It  is  to  a 
great  extent  a  sensuous  obsession  to  which 
in  this  country  the  husband  and  father  is, 
all  too  often,  ruthlessly  sacrificed.  If  this 
84 


AMERICAN   MOTHERS 

sacrifice  were  in  the  least  justified  by  the 
needs  of  the  infant,  there  would  be  little  to 
criticise;  but  it  is  distinctly  not  so  justified 
in  the  average  middle-jdass  household.  A 
phlegmatic  nurse  whose  ministrations  are 
rooted  in  duty  alone,  is  not  only  equally 
as  good  for  the  baby,  but  is  very  much 
better.  It  is  but  a  seed,  and  all  the  better, 
as  are  other  seeds,  for  being  left  undisturbed 
to  sleep  its  way  into  life. 

If  the  child  does  not  need  all  this  frenzy 
ofwatching  and  excited  coddling  of  the  more 
or  less  hysterical  mother,  then  it  is  not  only 
unwise  but  cruel  to  subject  the  bewildered 
young  father  to  the  half-tragic,  half-comic 
tyranny  of  an  American  household  ruled 
by  a  young  baby. 

The  violent  bushing  that  he  receives  at  the 
front  door,  the  complete  ignoring  of  all  of  his 
rights,  the  needless  neglect  hour  after  hour 
while  his  wife  —  pardon,  his  baby's  mother! 
— worships  at  her  new  shrine,  emphasize 
the  unbalanced  emotionality  of  most  of  our 
young  women.  Those  hours  of  heedless 

85 


AMERICAN   MOTHERS 

neglect  on  the  part  of  the  wife  are  very 
often  the  entering  wedge  which  some  day 
will  separate  the  two.  The  child,  instead  of 
bringing  them  close/  together,  is  the  inno- 
cent cause  of  their  growing  apart.  At  the  root 
of  it  is  not  too  much  love,  but  too  little 
mental  balance.  Moreover,  the  conten- 
tion is  made  that  it  is  not  wholly  love 
which  blinds  her,  it  is  to  a  certain  extent 
the  emotional  indulgence  of  a  febrile  un- 
controlled young  woman  adrift  on  the  sea 
of  a  newly  discovered  instinct. 

"Knowledge    is    the    parent   of    love; 
Wisdom,  love  itself." 

If  it  is  claimed  that  the  national  curse 
of  poor  servants  is  the  cause  of  this  un- 
deniable obsession  of  young  American 
mothers,  the  reply  is  ready :  "  Why  then 
is  it  that  between  the  years  of  four  and 
ten  American  children  do  not  see  enough 
of  their  mothers  ? "  The  servant  question 
is  surely  no  nearer  solution,  and  no  apa- 
thetic nurse  can  then  give  the  child  what 
the  mother  can  and  should  give. 
86 


II 

PRUNING    THE    YOUNG     PLANTS 

MORE  than  one  American  mother  has 
admitted  to  the  writer  a  curious  sudden 
reaction  of  indifference  against  her  once- 
worshiped  baby  after  the  fifth  year.  The 
ecstatic  mother-passion  of  earlier  days  has 
mysteriously  fled,  just  as  the  wife-ecstasy 
had  fled  in  its  turn.  She  admitted  it,  as  if 
it  were  an  interesting  psychic  phenome- 
non, and  she  helpless  to  right  it — just 
when  the  child  really  begins  to  need  her 
tenderness,  her  time,  all  of  her  wisdom 
and  gravest  consideration ! 

Every  one  of  these  successive  phases  of 
motherhood  could  just  as  well  have  been 
taught  her  years  before,  taught  her  to 
watch  for,  guard  against,  and  meet  intelli- 
gently when  the  issues  presented  them- 
selves, one  by  one,  in  her  own  life.  Some 
new  factor  must  be  evolved  in  our  national 


AMERICAN   MOTHERS 

life  to  fill  successfully  this  gap  between 
four  and  ten  in  our  children's  lives. 

Only  when  enforced  by  poverty  do  a 
large  number  of  American  mothers  them- 
selves care  for  their  young  children,  be- 
yond mere  physical  needs.  They  would 
not  trust  the  little  impercipient  life  at  first 
to  a  nurse,  however  staid  and  competent; 
now,  more  often  than  is  good  to  see,  an 
ignorant  nursemaid  of  sixteen  years  be- 
comes the  predominant  element  in  the 
child's  life.  Manners,  morals,  mental  needs 
are  left  largely  in  her  hands  —  and  she  is 
a  mere  child  herself.  The  physical  needs, 
at  least  so  far  as  cleanliness  is  concerned, 
generally  remain  in  the  mother's  hands, 
but  the  question  of  the  child's  diet  runs 
riot  in  more  American  households  than  is 
at  all  realized.  If  the  child  is  well  dressed, 
its  hair  and  teeth  in  perfect  condition,  it  is 
turned  over  to  the  nurse  from  eight  in  the 
morning  till  eight  at  night. 

Can  it  be  that  we  had  much  better  adopt 
from  England  the  nursery-governess  and 
88 


AMERICAN   MOTHERS 

the  nursery-table  ?  The  former  (with  all 
her  drawbacks)  is  infinitely  more  compe- 
tent than  our  mere  "  nurse-girls  " ;  while 
the  latter  institution  ensures  the  simple 
diet  of  which  our  children  are  in  such  dire 
need. 

At  least  we  should  be  spared  the  sight 
of  an  elaborately  dressed  American  baby 
of  six,  entirely  unattended,  walking  into  a 
huge  hotel  dining-room  where  her  parents 
had  lived  for  years,  and  ordering  "  deviled 
crabs  and  pink  ice  cream  "  for  her  dinner, 
which  the  poor  little  creature  actually  ate 
amid  the  smiling  glances  of  the  guests  and 
waiters  !  It  was  no  less  than  a  painful  vsight, 
and  by  no  means  an  isolated  instance. 
What  was  inevitably  ahead  of  that  child  ? 
Her  digestion  ruined,  her  vanity,  her  in- 
dependence forced  before  their  time,  her 
whole  sensibility  blunted.  Even  hotel-life 
need  not  spoil  a  child,  if  less  money  were 
spent  on  her  clothes  and  her  mother's  and 
part  of  the  saving  paid  in  fair  wages  to  a 
first-class  governess,  who  would  remove 


AMERICAN   MOTHERS 

the  little  one  from  flattering  glances,  and 
place  her  in  a  world  where  "deviled crabs'1 
would  remain  an  unknown  temptation  for 
many  a  long  year  to  come. 

If  those  American  mothers  who  labor 
so  many  hours  in  torturing  some  flimsy 
material  with  drawn-work  or  embroidery 
would  but  give  the  same  time,  or  even 
part  of  it,  to  the  little  child's  spirit  instead 
of  its  body  !  Very  often  we  see  a  prince- 
like  body,  carrying  a  starving  little  soul, 
—  starving  for  companionship,  for  healthy 
amusement,  for  that  sense  of  comfort  that 
strict  but  intelligent  discipline  alone  brings 
alike*  to  children  and  to  servants. 

Children's  amusements  in  this  country 
are  undoubtedly  becoming  more  and  more 
artificial.  Why?  Because  it  makes  the 
mother's  and  nurse's  task  easier.  Examine 
the  situation  from  whatever  standpoint  you 
choose,  every  facet  shows  this  deplorable 
fact.  To  feed  and  clothe  a  child  of  five  is 
a  very  simple  and  expeditious  matter  com- 
pared with  amusing  that  restless  little  bun- 
90 


AMERICAN   MOTHERS 

die  of  activities.  And  yet  in  a  long  life  the 
writer  has  known  only  one  mother  who 
took  upon  her  own  shoulders  the  entire 
amusement  of  her  family  of  five  children, 
leaving  the  sewing  to  the  nurses !  There 
were  no  theatres,  no  vaudeville,  no  cir- 
cuses, no  hippodromes,  to  bewilder  and 
exhaust  those  children's  minds;  no  me- 
chanical toys,  no  elaborate  paper  dolls 
"  made  in  Germany."  They  had  hammers, 
nails,  and  some  boards  ;  pieces  of  treasured 
Bristol-board,  scissors,  paste,  and  a  little 
paint-box, and  the  "stay-in"  days  flew  by, 
given  over  to  the  joy  of  creation  under  the 
sympathetic  direction  of  that  mother,  who 
sat  in  a  low  chair,  close  to, their  level,  that 
she  might  be  one  of  them.  On  the  out-of- 
door  days,  they  were  tumbled  into  a  little 
wagonette,  which  was  their  nursery.  The 
old  pony  was  driven  by  the  mother  her- 
self; the  best  child  of  the  day  sat  beside 
her  in  the  seat  of  honor,  and  off  they 
jogged  to  the  woods  or  the  beach,  both 
of  which  were  happily  accessible.  Their 


AMERICAN   MOTHERS 

simple  lunch  was  devoured  afield.  The 
mother  invented,  directed,  and  entered 
into  all  their  games, — the  merriest  of 
them  all.  But  the  charm  of  an  ocean  beach 
is  supreme  and  needs  no  human  aids ;  so, 
once  she  gave  a  push  to  the  little  eager 
minds,  off  they  slid,  enthusiastic  and  con- 
tented for  hours.  The  mother  whipped  out 
a  book  from  under  the  carriage-seat,  and 
so  got  to  herself  a  couple  of  hours  of  cov- 
eted reading.  For  she  was  a  brilliant,  cul- 
tivated woman,  knowing  several  languages 
—  and  yet  was  content  to  spend  it  all  lav- 
ishly for  thirteen  years  of  her  short  life, 
upon  her  children. 

This  inspired  mother  claimed  that  it 
was  far  less  of  a  strain  to  play  with  her 
children  than  to  punish  them  ;  because  a 
large  percentage  of  the  sins  of  childhood 
are  based  on  lack  of  intelligent  diversion. 
From  this  mother  came  no  whine  about 
her  wasted  talents,  —  because  she  made 
use  of  them  !  During  the  severe  winters, 
she  made  her  incessant  task  of  reading  to 
92 


AMERICAN   MOTHERS 

her  children  tell  significantly.  Before  the 
eldest  was  ten  years  old,  they  all  knew 
almost  every  nook  and  cranny  of  Walter 
Scott,  and  other  standard  works  followed 
in  turn.  She  read  certain  idyllic  tales  writ- 
ten in  French,  which  she  translated  aloud 
into  simple  English,  thereby  diverting  her- 
self as  well  as  the  children.  It  was  years 
before  they  even  knew  what  she  had  done. 
One  of  that  family  told  me  that  he  had 
never  read  a  current  book  of  fiction  until 
he  was  sixteen  !  His  taste  had  been  formed 
without  any  long-winded  lectures  on  liter- 
ature. Froissart,  JEsop,  Josephus,  and 
Bunyan  were  household  words. 

Later,  the  mother  wrote  little  plays  full 
of  fire  and  sword,  into  which  was  smuggled 
many  a  spoonful  of  history,  or  mythology, 
or  poetical  legend.  The  children  were  the 
eager  little  stock  company.  She  rehearsed 
them,  suggested  costumes  and  scenery; 
and  yet,  with  all  this  prodigal  expenditure 
of  time  and  real  talent,  she  always  laugh- 
ingly claimed  to  other  mothers:  "Try  it! 
93 


AMERICAN   MOTHERS 

They  are  happier,  and  so  am  I.  Idleness 
and  absence  of  motive  lead  to  crime  in  the 
nursery  as  well  as  the  street.  And  as  for 
me,  I  know  exactly  what  they  are  doing, 
and  how." 

Hers  was  a  rarely  rich,  successful  life. 
That  she  was  a  much-loved  woman  to 
the  end  scarce  need  be  recorded  of  her. 

Within  a  year  the  dernier  cri  in  child- 
amusement  at  a  charitable  fete  brought 
vividly  back,  through  contrast,  that  pic- 
ture of  fine  motherhood.  Kinetoscopes 
depicted,  for  tents  reeking  full  of  feverish- 
eyed  children,  fictitious  scenes  of  Russian 
cruelty  ending  in  a  most  revolting  form 
of  murder  !  Little  breathless  voices  asked 
in  the  dark :  "  What  does  it  mean,  mo- 
ther?" "Why  does  he  hate  her  so  much, 
mother?"  One  strained  in  the  half  light 
to  see  such  mothers  of  little  beings  who 
would  have  been  so  happy  merely  roam- 
ing through  the  adjoining  meadows !  Then 
later  came  another  "amusement"  for  the 
children.  A  real  hose-and-ladder  com- 
94 


AMERICAN   MOTHERS 

pany,  a  real  fire  engine  rented  for  the 
purpose ;  a  fire  alarm,  the  burning  of  a 
small  wooden  house  erected  for  the  pur- 
pose, the  realistic  rescue  of  a  straw  mo- 
ther and  child, — all  for  the  amusement 
— save  the  mark!  —  of  those  watching 
babies!  The  whole  thing  was  absolutely 
insane  in  its  blindness  to  the  real  needs  of 
child-life.  No  wonder  we  see  them  blase  at 
eight,  nervous  wrecks  at  twelve,  neuras- 
thenia, insomnia,  dipsomania,  decadence 
ahead  of  them.  And  the  committee  who 
made  out  this  programme  (including* 
many  another  "sensational  feature") 
was  composed  of  the  leading  women  of  the 
city  in  which  the  festival  was  held.  Where 
were  the  mothers  to  wipe  out  with  justi- 
fiable wrath  such  a  breach  of  sane  think- 
ing? such  an  outrage  to  the  most  obvious 
of  responsibilities  ? 

Our  American  communities  are  quick 

to  regulate  child-labor  in  some  wretched 

household  where  the  pennies    count    so 

much ;  but  one  seldom  hears  of  any  laws 

95 


AMERICAN   MOTHERS 

to  regulate  children's  amusements  among 
the  many  comfortable  homes  where  the 
mothers  are  either  too  weak,  too  silly,  or  too 
selfish,  to  make  and  enforce  their  own  laws. 

And  so  the  weeds  come  thick  and  fast 
and  choke  the  young  growing  plants, — 
the  weed  of  vaudeville,  killing  the  sense 
for  true  dramatic  art ;  the  pest  of  rag-time, 
killing  music;  slang,  choking  language; 
indiscriminate  current-novel-reading,  fatal 
to  any  good  reading  in  the  future;  the 
devastating  weed  of  unhealthy  excitement, 
to  blight,  for  all  time,  any  simple  whole- 
someness  of  either  thought  or  feeling. 

A  law  prohibiting  children  under  the 
age  of  fifteen  from  entering  any  and  all 
theatres  might  well  be  passed  with  profit, 
taking  out  of  the  incompetent  hands  of 
mothers  any  volition  in  this  grave  matter. 
It  fills  the  air — this  craze  of  the  merest 
children  for  cheap  shows  in  this  country ; 
it  packs  their  minds  with  vulgar  triviali- 
ties, debases  their  ideals,  perverts  their 
taste.  It  is  becoming  daily  more  frequent. 


AMERICAN   MOTHERS 

As  well  feed  a  child  on  mushrooms  and 
champagne,  and  expect  it  ever  afterwards 
to  relish  bread  and  milk. 

It  is  but  a  repetition  of  that  poor  neg- 
lected baby  and  her  "deviled  crabs  and 
pink  ice  cream  " !  One  sees  hundreds  of 
examples  of  it,  in  one  form  or  another, 
every  year  of  living  in  this  country.  At 
the  root  of  it,  in  every  single  instance,  is 
an  unwise  mother.  Her  children  remain 
ignorant  where  they  should  be  familiar; 
become  enlightened  where  they  should  be 
blind ;  and  suffer  always  from  enlarge- 
ment of  the  emotions. 

Within  a  year  the  writer  saw  at  a  hotel 
an  eager  group  of  beautifully  clad  little 
ones  gathered  every  evening  between 
seven  and  eight  about  a  middle-aged 
cripple  who  told  them  stories.  They  were 
breathless,  entranced.  That  it  was  a  per- 
fectly new  element  in  their  lives  was  ap- 
parent. To  be  deprived  of  it  was  the 
severest  punishment  in  that  colony  of 
several  hundred  souls. 
97 


AMERICAN   MOTHERS 

A  young  woman  was  overheard  idly  to 
observe  to  her  companion,  "  Is  n't  it  a 
charming  sight  ? " 

The  older  woman  with  her  replied  an- 
grily: "It  is  distinctly  not  a  charming 
sight !  It  is  shocking !  What  are  they, 
with  all  their  extravagant  clothes,  but  the 
starving  children  of  selfish,  vain  mothers? 
That  unfortunate  man  simply  fills  up  an 
awful  gap  in  their  lives — every  mother 
as  she  sees  it  should  blush  and  hang  her 
head.  Out  of  that  score  of  children,  there 
is  not  one  who  has  ever  had  an  adult  give 
it  any  real  companionship  before  in  its 
life.  I  have  taken  the  trouble  to  verify 
this  —  and  so  I  say  again,  that  picture 
over  there  is  far  from  being  charming ! " 


Ill 

DESTROYING    THE    INSECTS    AT 
BLOSSOMING    TIME 

A  WISE  mother  will  make  long-stored 
wisdom  bear  fresh  fruit.  All  of  her  read- 
ing can  be  utilized.  Long  ago  she  read 
that  "a  word  unspoken  is  like  a  sword 
in  thy  scabbard — thine;  if  vented,  thy 
sword  is  in  another's  hand."  She  can 
draw  a  lesson  from  it  for  her  son  in  the 
power  of  silence  and  reserve.  She  also 
read  that  "respect  for  others  is  the  first 
condition  of  savoir  vivre" ;  and  she  is 
helped  in  her  task  of  teaching  her  girl 
tactfulness  and  good  manners ;  and  that 
they  are  not  to  be  looked  for  in  a  laby- 
rinth of  negatives,  but  found  walking 
along  the  highway  in  the  good  sunshine. 

In  the  much-mooted  question  of  man- 
ners the  imitativeness  of  children  should 
make  the  mothers'  task  easier  than  it  is, 
99 


AMERICAN    MOTHERS 

for  the  solution  is  example,  not  precept. 
Imitation  is  the  whole  story.  A  little  boy 
is  scolded  for  not  remembering  to  raise 
his  cap  "to  the  ladies."  I  have  met  lads 
of  six  and  eight  to  whom  this  courtesy 
had  already  become  as  instinctive  as  it 
was  to  their  father.  No  more  so,  no  less, 
but  exactly  as  it  was  to  their  father.  "Trot 
father,  trot  mither,  how  can  foal  amble  ? " 
Making  all  allowance  for  wide  national 
differences  of  opinion,  there  is  much  in 
a  French  mother's  sympathy  with  her 
son,  as  he  approaches  manhood,  which 
seems  more  intelligent  than  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  way  of  withholding  sympathy  at 
that  crisis.  Most  American  mothers  sud- 
denly turn  into  stepmothers  at  this  crit- 
ical period.  Every  sentence  begins  with 
"  Thou  shalt  not,"  and  she  plumes  her- 
self upon  her  righteousness.  And  her 
boy?  He  becomes  a  stranger  to  her. 
The  French  mother  but  adds  a  new  com- 
radeship to  her  old  tenderness,  full  of 
far-sighted  wisdom  and  fathomless  sym- 
100 


AMERICAN   MOTHERS 

pathy  for  existing  conditions;  not  for 
ideal  conditions  that  do  not  exist.  He  and 
his  mother  become  closer  friends  than 
ever,  and  he  does  not  withdraw  himself 
from  her.  She  cares  much  more  for  her 
boy  than  for  her  righteousness  —  this 
mother ! 

It  is  but  a  change  in  the  intellectual 
outlook,  and  yet  surprisingly  few  Ameri- 
can women  recognize  the  necessity  for  it. 
When  an  American  mother  has  the  intel- 
ligence to  understand,  she  finds  that  her 
son  will  bring  to  her  not  only  his  tri- 
umphs but  his  failures;  not  only  the 
story  of  his  virtues  but  that  of  his  sins, 
—  man  to  man,  —  and  then  only  the 
wisest  motherhood  can  guide  him  safely 
out  of  the  wilderness. 

But  the  deepest  stain  on  American 
motherhood  is  exactly  at  this  period  in 
the  life  of  her  grown  son  and  grown 
daughter.  For  some  reason,  partly  tem- 
peramental, a  large  number  of  mothers 
fall  short  of  any  comprehension  of  what 
101 


AMERICAN    MOTHERS 

is  demanded  of  them.  Even  when  they 
have  been  faithful  in  all  their  earlier 
trusts,  they  fail  very  often  at  this  point. 

Her  boy,  now  a  man,  of  course  loves 
her  as  of  old,  but  she  has  not  been  his  in- 
tellectual comrade,  his  strongest  inspira- 
tion, as  she  might  have  been  had  she  put 
her  brain  into  her  motherhood,  applied 
what  knowledge  she  had,  or  studied 
along  the  best  lines  running  parallel  to 
the  lines  of  his  development. 

There  are  scores  of  helpful  hygienic 
and  philosophical  books  that  would  aid 
mothers  to  approach  their  problem  well- 
equipped.  All  this  is  of  course  also  the 
task  of  the  father,  but  we  are  speaking  of 
American  conditions,  and  we  may  as  well 
exclude  him  first  as  last,  as  he  has  elected 
to  shed  family  responsibilities,  save  that 
of  lavish  monetary  support.  In  that  par- 
ticular he  is  a  prince. 

One  illustration  cut  from  the  matrix 
of  life  is  worth  a  chapter  of  generalities. 
One  summer  night  a  few  years  ago  four 

IO2 


AMERICAN    MOTHERS 

people  sat  on  a  high  roof  near  New  York 
City.  One  could  see  far  down  the  bay 
and  over  to  the  Jersey  shore.  There  was 
a  middle-aged  woman  and  her  son  of 
twenty-three  years,  an  elderly  man  and 
his  wife  —  all  Americans. 

The  mother  had  been  boasting  of  her 
three  boys,  their  success,  their  virtues. 
Under  it  all  was  a  very  natural  and  pretty 
pride,  as  of  a  gardener  telling  of  his  roses, 
and  their  freedom  from  the  worm  i'  the 
bud. 

A  chance  word  brought  politics  to  the 
front.  The  older  woman  said  aside  to  the 
young  man  :  — 

"So  you've  twice  cast  your  yote!  It 
marks  an  epoch  in  a  man's  life,  only 
second  to  marriage,  does  n't  it  ?  To  take 
one's  part,  though  small,  in  the  making 
of  history — that  is  fine  !  " 

The  mother  laughed. 

"  My  son  has  never  voted,  and  says  he 
never  will — he  hates  politics,  and  I  don't 
wonder ! " 

103 


AMERICAN   MOTHERS 

All  as  lightly  as  if  telling  of  a  fastidious 
taste  in  cravats  ! 

The  son  added  tolerantly,  "We  men 
know  what  a  dirty  mess  it  is." 

In  the  older  woman's  heart  moaned  a 
sad  voice :  "  She  is  a  failure^  this  mother ! 
She  is  blind,  and  so  he,  the  son,  does  not 
see  the  truth!" 

The  silence  which  followed  was  filled 
by  the  languor  of  the  heat  and  the  pres- 
sure of  low-bending  skies. 

Then  the  older  man  chuckled  and  mut- 
tered: "  There  's  trouble  ahead  —  low 
bridge  ! "  For  he  knew  his  wife  and  the 
hot  fires  flaming  beneath  her  silence. 

"  Will  you  take  me  over  there,  where  I 
can  see  the  light  on  the  Statue  of  Lib- 
erty?" she  presently  asked  quietly,  and 
she  and  the  youth  walked  away. 

It  took  her  forty-five  minutes  to  do  the 
work,  and  years  have  passed,  but  that 
man  has  voted  ever  since  ! 

Jerking  her  head  in  the  direction  of 
Bedloe's  Island,  she  began:  — 
104 


AMERICAN   MOTHERS 

"Oh  don't  laugh,  don't  laugh,  you 
have  admitted  a  crime !  Don't  you 
know,  have  n't  you  been  taught,  don't 
you  see  for  yourself,  that  every  time  an 
educated  man  in  the  United  States  fails 
to  vote  he  has  slyly  slipped  a  stone  out 
of  place  in  the  foundations  of  that  great 
statue  over  there,  —  the  foundations  of 
our  government  ?  Upon  your  vote  rests 
the  security  of  the  whole  complicated 
structure  of  republicanism,  as  we  Ameri- 
cans are  now  testing  it  in  the  eyes  of  the 
world.  Whatever  you  do,  do  not  laugh  ! " 

In  the  end  she  held  out  her  hand  and 
spoke  gently :  "  You  see  I,  being  a  wo- 
man, have  no  vote,  so  you  must  cast 
yours  for  yourself  and  for  me  too,  as 
wisely  as  you  can.  Will  you  ?  " 

The  mother  was  still  laughing  when 
the  older  woman  bade  them  good-night ; 
but  the  latter  was  very  sad,  having  no 
sons  of  her  own  with  any  need  of  her. 

American  women  constantly  cry  out 
against  the  smallness  of  their  lives,  the 
105 


AMERICAN   MOTHERS 

limitations  that  encompass  them.  If  they 
would  but  do  wisely  and  thoroughly  their 
apportioned  tasks,  they  would  have  need 
of  every  power  possible  to  humanity, 
such  are  the  potentialities  of  true  mother- 
hood. 

The  schools  of  both  son  and  daughter 
would  be  forced  into  rational,  logical 
lines ;  the  boy  would  be  trained  first,  last, 
and  always,  for  good  citizenship ;  the  daugh- 
ter would  not  be  allowed  to  drift  on,  as 
helpless  as  a  leaf  on  a  stream,  with  no 
knowledge  whatever  of  the  currents,  the 
cataracts,  the  whirlpools  ahead  of  her  — 
inevitably  ahead  of  her  —  on  her  way  down 
to  the  broad  sea  of  fine  womanhood. 

Women  fret  themselves  and  others  for 
the  right  to  vote,  and  they  do  not  see  that 
their  son's  vote,  their  brother's,  their 
friend's,  is  verily  their  own.  They  cry  out 
against  certain  social  evils,  and  they  for- 
get that  the  ranks  are  ever  recruited  from 
among  the  daughters  of  Vanity,  Uncon- 
trol,  and  Idleness. 

106 


AMERICAN   MOTHERS 

Even  the  childless  women  of  the  world 
have  placed  upon  them  the  responsibility 
of  motherhood  ;  for  every  young  man  can 
be  a  task  to  them,  every  girl  better  for 
their  counsel. 

There  is  no  excuse  for  idleness  or  re- 
pining— there  is  work  in  plenty  for  all 
women ;  and  it  is  the  most  honorable 
work  in  the  world,  for  — 

"  On  the  blue  mountains  of  our  dim 
childhood  towards  which  we  ever  turn 
and  look,  stand  the  mothers  who  marked 
out  to  us,  from  thence,  our  life." 


WHAT    WE   PUT   UP    WITH 


WHAT  WE  PUT  UP  WITH 


THE  feeling  of  an  American  for  his  flag 
is  especially  deeply  rooted.  It  is  the  only 
symbol  he  has,  about  which  to  wreathe 
whatever  of  national  sentiment  he  has 
within  him.  It  takes  the  place  of  a  royal 
family  in  our  imaginations ;  it  survives 
our  changes  of  administration;  it  stands 
the  assaults  of  war,  and  the  equally  peril- 
ous countermining  of  peace.  It  has  coirfe 
to  symbolize,  in  a  word,  our  national  con- 
tinuity. 

The  tiniest  emigrant  is  quickly  taught 
in  our  public  schools  to  raise  his  grimy 
little  fist  in  salutation  of  it;  the  toughest 
old  soldier  or  sailor  needs  no  other  lead- 
ership to  spur  him  on  to  death  in  its  de- 
fense. It  is  as  if  we  were  to  paraphrase 
that  old  mingled  cry  of  mourning  and  tri- 
iii 


WHAT   WE    PUT   UP   WITH 

umph,  "Le  President  est  mort;  vive  le 
Drapeau  ! " 

Only  a  couple  of  yards  of  bright  bunt- 
ing, and  eighty  millions  of  people  behind 
it  —  couchant. 

And  yet  surely  there  is  no  nation  of 
them  aU'which  so  persistently  misuses  its 
most  cherished  emblem,  forgetful  that  "if 
we  wish  ourselves  to  be  high,  we  should 
treat  that  which  is  over  us  as  high."  No- 
thing is  more  certain  than  that  "familiarity 
excludes  respect,"  as  ^Esop  chose  to  put  it. 

One  must  live  for  five  years  under  the 
flags  of  other  nations  to  thrill  deeply  at 
sight  of  one's  own ;  patriotism  seeming  to 
grow  in  a  ratio  of  distance  from  home. 
Witness  the  sore-headed  German  Social- 
ist fuming  like  a  furnace  in  the  Father- 
land, where  nothing  pleases  him,  from  the 
Kaiser  down  to  the  tax  on  beer;  and  see 
him  three  years  later  transplanted  to 
American  soil,  raising  his  stein,  with  tears 
in  his  eyes,  as  he  drinks  his  "Hoch  der 
Kaiser." 

112 


WHAT   WE    PUT   UP   WITH 

The  writer  in  her  younger  days  has 
stood  for  hours  up  in  the  old  Campanile 
at  Venice,  or  across  the  canal  at  the  Salute, 
and  watched  daily  for  the  coming  of  a  cer- 
tain white  ship-of-war  carrying  "  the  Flag." 
At  last  there  was  a  movement  in  the  pale 
distance  far  down  the  harbor,  as  if  a  phan- 
tom ship  out  of  the  dim  past  had  entered 
the  Diga  of  Malamocco.  Creeping  on  and 
on  in  the  breathless  iridescent  morning 
air,  at  last  the  great  white  monster  emerged, 
and  came  more  and  more  slowly  through 
the  narrow  path  to  the  harbor.  The  Flag 
—  the  Stars  and  Stripes!  And  then  a  sud- 
den veil  of  tears  blots  out  all:  ship  and 
flag  and  shore  and  quivering  sunlight  — 
all  but  the  aching  thought  of —  home  ! 

Years  later  this  Exile  (not  Expatriate), 
coming  down  from  the  Black  Sea  on  the 
Bosphorus  up  near  Buyukdereh,  with  Asia 
on  the  left  and  Europe  on  the  right,  and 
with  thoughts  bent  full  upon  that  unique 
geographical  situation,  suddenly  felt  her 
heart  stop  beating  with  a  passionate  nos- 
"3 


WHAT   WE    PUT  UP  WITH 

talgia,  all  interest  in  geography  dead  at  a 
breath. 

A  wandering  breeze  had  brought  down 
a  strain  of  familiar  music,  so  foreign  to  the 
environment  as  to  be  humorous  but  for 
its  fierce  tug  at  the  heart — "Dixie/* 
play.ed  on  a  mandolin  and  a  guitar,  com- 
ing from  a  trim  yacht  anchored  ofFThe- 
rapia,  the  Flag  floating  sleepily  from  her 
stern.  Space  was  annihilated,  home  brought 
so  close  that  one  stopped  breathing. 

And  again,  a  few  years  later,  in  Manila 
Bay  the  Exile  stood  on  the  deck  of  the 
flagship  which  had  led  the  battle  line  not 
many  months  before,  during  the  fight  of 
that  first  of  May. 

The  western  sky  was  quartered  in  blood 
and  gold  and  silver  and  iridescence;  one 
of  those  tropical  sunsets  that  are  impos- 
sible to  paint  by  either  brush  or  pen. 

About  the  American  man-of-war  was 
that  pitiful  semicircle  of  half-sunken  Span- 
ish ships,  before  there  was  time  to  remove 
them.  In  the  centre  of  the  poop  of  the 
114 


WHAT   WE   PUT   UP   WITH 

Olympia,  silhouetted  against  that  blazing 
sunset,  was  the  distinguished-looking,  very 
erect  figure  of  the  admiral,  in  white  uni- 
form, standing  at  attention,  facing  the 
Flag  as  it  was  lowered  from  the  staff.  As 
it  slipped  down  very  slowly  to  its  rest  for 
the  night,  the  bugles  sounded  retreat. 
Motionless  and  in  absolute  silence  the 
little  band  of  exiles  saw  the  naval  cere- 
mony through  to  its  finish. 

There  were  few  on  deck  that  evening 
who  failed  to  realize  that  it  was  an  illumi- 
nated page  in  American  history,  a  thing 
to  hush  the  light  jest,  excuse  enough  for 
full  eyes  and  quivering  lips. 

Against  such  a  mental  background  as 
this,  the  following  pictures  stand  out  with 
almost  painful  clearness.  Another  year 
and  another,  and  <c  home  "  was  no  longer 
an  abstraction  to  be  wept  over.  It  was 
there  within  gun-shot  of  the  steamer's 
rail;  the  Flag  on  Fort  Hamilton  whipping 
about  smartly  in  the  lively  afternoon 
breeze,  while  farther  up  the  beautiful  bay 


WHAT   WE   PUT   UP   WITH 

the  Statue  of  Liberty  was  veiled  in  the 
incoming  fog  from  the  sea. 

But  the  Exile's  eyes  were  dry,  her  pulse 
quick  with  righteous  indignation,  her  heart 
on  fire  with  the  first  deliberate  insult  she 
had  received  in  all  her  wanderings  —  at 
the  very  door  of  that  "home"  over  which 
she  had  so  long,  so  tenderly  brooded ! 

At  English  ports  her  oath  was  de- 
manded that  she  was  bringing  nothing 
contraband,  "  no  spirits  nor  tobacco  " ;  in 
Italy  her  keys  were  demanded.  She  had 
given  each  cheerfully  as  it  was  asked  for, 
her  keys  or  her  oath.  But  it  was  reserved 
for  her  own  country  to  first  demand  her 
solemn  oath,  and  then  instantly  repudiate 
it  by  demanding  her  keys  —  all  in  one  im- 
pertinent breath. 

Surely,  after  all,  that  French  critic  was 
justified  who  writes  of  "la  dure  inintelli- 
gence  des  Americains  du  Nord."  Such  a 
condition  as  invariably  confronts  the  re- 
turning American  wanderer  is  not  exactly 
calculated  to  further  his  patriotism;  it  is 
116 


WHAT   WE   PUT   UP   WITH 

undeniably  "hard"  and  even  more  "un- 
intelligent." 

And  of  all  the  equally  affronted,  equally 
outraged  hundreds  that  the  Exile  has 
since  seen  on  home-coming  steamers,  she 
has  met  only  one  whose  voice  was  heard 
in  quiet  but  passionate  protest.  The  voice 
of  the  People  has  dwindled,  it  seems  !  All 
the  rest  drifted  in  that  current  of  laisser 
faire  that  so  ill  fits  a  growing  people; 
some  silently  savage;  some  men  mutter- 
ing empty  anathemas  which  they  forgot 
the  next  day ;  more  vying  with  one  an- 
other in  that  "addiction  to  the  funny 
man"  which  is  the  "national  misfortune" 
of  America,  as  wrote  that  best  and  fairest 
critic  of  us  —  Matthew  Arnold. 

One  voice  has  at  last  been  raised  in  par- 
tial protest  against  this  brutal  condition,  but 
his  efforts  are  handicapped  by  the  law. 

More  and  more  our  Congressmen  are 
beginning  to  see  beyond  their  village  ho- 
rizons ;  to  vaunt  less  often  the  American 
claim  of  perfection  ;  to  find  some  wisdom 
117 


WHAT   WE   PUT   UP   WITH 

in  the  words  of  Haydon  :  "  Never  disre- 
gard what  your  enemies  say  —  so  far  as  it 
goes,  attend  to  them."  So  perhaps  the 
dawning  of  hope  at  least,  if  not  of  redemp- 
tion, is  at  hand. 

The  national  talent  for  laughing  off  the 
sting  of  such  abuses  of  individual  liberty  is 
one  of  the  fairly  long  list  of  things  upon 
which  we  pride  ourselves.  Is  it  not  rather 
an  inherent  insensitiveness  —  that  "dure 
inintelligence  "  —  that  has  made  it  possible 
for  us  to  have  tolerated  it  so  long? 

The  flag  that  was  wept  over  in  Europe 
and  in  Asia,  is  seen  here  billowing  over 
hotels  and  boarding-houses,  for  no  other 
than  commercial  purposes ;  seen  in  saloon 
windows  helping  patriotically  to  advertise 
and  elevate  a  Western  whiskey  over  the 
Scotch  and  Irish  brands;  seen  fastened  on 
a  national  holiday  to  the  blinders  of  a  weary 
mule  to  keep  off  the  flies !  That  of  late 
something  has  been  done  toward  curtailing 
these  abuses  of  our  flag,  is  gratefully  ad- 
mitted; but  a  recent  holiday  saw  each  and 
118 


WHAT   WE   PUT   UP   WITH 

all  of  the  old  abuses  returned  in  full  force. 
There  were  no  protests  from  the  public,  no 
arrests  by  the  police.  To  pass  laws  seems 
a  very  easy  thing  for  us  to  accomplish ; 
rigidly  and  persistently  to  enforce  them, 
from  one  mayor's  administration  to  another, 
is  yet  to  be  achieved.  Almost  as  soon  as 
born,  an  amazing  number  of  our  laws  be- 
come dead-letter. 

Is  it  so  small  a  thing  that  our  only  sym- 
bol of  autonomy  and  union  should  be 
misused,  degraded  ?  Even  a  starving  scrub- 
woman parts  last  of  all  with  her  wedding- 
ring! 

The  public  cemetery  where  are  buried 
our  neglected  and  unfathered  issues,  great 
and  small,  is  in  our  comic  weeklies.  There, 
side  by  side  with  the  custom-house  outrage, 
we  lay  the  affront  to  the  Flag  (which  we  have 
followed  reverently  all  over  the  world), 
and  we  bury  them  both  among  the  other 
national  "jokes,"  with  national  flippancy. 

They  are  just  two  of  the  things  we  put 
up  with. 


II 

"  Cleverness  is  serviceable  for  everything,  sufficient 
for  nothing."  —  AMIEL. 

IT  has  recently  been  cleverly  said  of  this 
poor  pen-ridden  generation  of  ours,  that 
"  they  even  put  the  letters  of  the  alphabet 
into  their  soup  "  ! 

Who  of  us  has  not,  more  than  once,  been 
tempted  to  regret  those  simple  ancient  times 
when  a  band  of  hieroglyphics  cut  into  an 
upright  stone  represented  all  that  was  con- 
sidered worth  recording  during  a  century 
or  two  of  living  under  the  Egyptian  sun  ? 
Surely  such  a  condition  of  temperate  and 
leisurely  news-gathering  comes  nearer  san- 
ity, nearer  the  decencies  of  civilization,  than 
the  present  daily — almost  hourly —  rehash 
of  local  crime  and  senseless  personalities 
served  up,  more  or  less  cleverly,  in  certain 
of  our  newspapers,  turning  the  largest  city 
into  a  mere  village  agape  for  vulgar  or  vi- 
120 


WHAT   WE   PUT   UP   WITH 

cious  tittle-tattle.  It  does  very  little  towards 
letting  in  either  Sweetness  or  Light  upon 
a  world  given  over  to  acidity  and  darkness. 
It  is  indeed  "  news  for  the  servants1  hall "  ! 

Year  after  year  we  hear  much  boasting, 
among  our  loud-voiced  majority,  of  our 
national  gift  for  news-getting ;  and  tolerant 
laughs  at  the  "  smartness  "  that  crawls  in 
the  mud,  face-down,  under  other  people's 
hedges,  bent  upon  no  higher  mission  than 
a  newspaper's  profit ;  albeit  avowing  to  high 
heaven  a  motive  fairly  pickled  in  the  vine- 
gar of  righteousness ! 

The  voiceless  minority  of  the  land  (al- 
though apt  to  be  much  the  more  enlight- 
ened) is  disenfranchised  by  one  of  several 
modern  political  fallacies,  and  has  no  re- 
course under  present  conditions  but  to  wait 
and  mutter  to  the  wall,  as  do  the  Arabs : 
"  When  you  are  an  anvil,  be  patient ;  when 
a  hammer,  strike ! "  Knowing  that  the 
Prophets  of  a  country,  if  not  the  Law,  are 
ever  found  in  the  meagre  ranks  of  the  mi- 
nority, and  praying  some  day  to  be  the 
121 


WHAT   WE    PUT    UP    WITH 

"  hammer,"  and  then  Allah  grant  we  may 
fashion  a  new  set  of  decencies  for  our 
country  ! 

An  English  critic  has  truly  said  of  us  that 
we  have  but  the  newspapers  we  deserve,  and 
that  they  are  "  the  direct  product  of  the 
want  felt,"  else  they  would  soon  die,  as  do 
the  books  that  no  one  reads. 

Some  of  our  claims  against  another  na- 
tion's press  laws,  and  in  favor  of  our  own, 
are  delightfully  inconsequent  and  contra- 
dictory. Our  indignation  at  the  printed 
pruriency  of  France  almost  chokes  us ;  and 
yet  the  daily  lawlessness  of  our  own  "  cock- 
ney" press,  its  gloating  exposure  of  moral 
rottenness,  reaches  and  pollutes  the  minds 
of  literally  millions  of  our  boys  and  girls, 
whereas  a  book  of  Maupassant's  would 
have  reached  but  a  few  score  of  readers  — 
repelling  a  sensation-fed  public,  rather  than 
attracting  it,  by  its  very  literary  art.  And 
yet  his  books  —  ask  for  them  at  a  public 
library ! 

The  whole  civilized  world  was  revolted 
122 


WHAT   WE   PUT   UP   WITH 

by  the  extraordinary  license  allowed  certain 
of  our  newspapers  during  a  recent  daily  ex- 
posure of  an  unsightly  crime.  For  the  most 
priggish  nation  in  the  world  to-day  stood 
unveiled  for  once,  and  we  were  known  as  a 
nation  of  hypocrites.  It  was  demanded  of 
us:  "Where  are  your  laws  to  put  a  stop 
to  this  ?  Where  the  public  opinion  to  de- 
mand closed  doors,  or  at  least  a  decent  ex- 
purgation ?  Is  your  freedom  but  license  in 
domino  ? " 

That  the  churches  went  promptly  into 
hysterics,  after  every  last  hideous  detail  had 
been  well-rooted  in  the  public  imagination, 
only  adds  to  the  odious  humor  of  the 
situation. 

That  good  of  any  sort  can  possibly  come 
out  of  these  American  "exposures"  —  as 
we  call  them  —  is  simply  an  insult  to  hu- 
man intelligence.  If  good  (as  those  inter- 
ested financially  in  the  question  claim),  then 
why  expurgate  the  gentle  Amiel  in  the  trans- 
lation? Why  govern  our  magazines  by 
strict  unwritten  laws  until  they  have  be- 
123 


WHAT   WE   PUT   UP   WITH 

come  monuments  of  dry  prudishness,  full 
of  half-truths  ?  If  the  whole  truth  about 
living  be  beneficial  to  the  public  morals 
when  dished  up  daily  in  a  half-penny  paper 
by  a  half-penny  reporter,  surely  it  can  do  no 
harm  when  served  monthly  on  cream-paper 
by  a  cultivated  literary  expert ! 

There  is  no  logic  whatever  in  our  atti- 
tude. Rather  let  the  newspapers  be  rigidly 
controlled  by  written  laws,  and  the  present 
unwritten  laws  governing  our  magazines  be 
relaxed  a  bit.  Should  we  then  not  be  a  little 
nearer  to  that  higher  civilization  rightly 
denied  us  by  the  critics  of  the  "  American 
experiment "  ? 

That  the  power  behind  the  magazine's 
editors  lies  in  its  advertisements  is  of  course 
well  understood.  It  is  often  privately 
pleaded  in  palliation  of  editorial  prudery. 
But  surely  this  commercial  sensitiveness 
is  sometimes  overdone  !  A  magazine  sub- 
editor once  confessed  to  being  compelled, 
under  strict  orders  from  the  manager,  to 
blue-pencil  some  lines,  in  a  short  story, 
124 


WHAT   WE   PUT   UP   WITH 

descriptive  of  a  doll's  lace-trimmed  under- 
wear,—  a  recent  threat  of  withdrawal  of  cer- 
tain advertisements  from  a  Western  hard- 
ware man,  offended  by  a  like,  but  lesser, 
indiscretion,  having  lent  a  temporary  sen- 
sitiveness to  the  editorial  modesty.  Yet 
this  absurd,  almost  unbelievable,  decorum 
is  contemporaneous  with  a  daily  press  that 
goes  on  its  outrageous  way,  unrebuked, 
unostracized. 

Leaving  the  fields  of  newspapers  and 
periodicals,  one  meets  in  the  world  of  books 
quite  a  different  —  and  almost  equally  de- 
plorable—  condition,  if  judged  by  the  laws 
of  higher  civilization  ;  and  do  we  not  every 
hour  loudly  proclaim  our  right  to  such 
judgment? 

There  are  signs  that  the  government  of 
our  public  libraries  is  largely  left  in  the 
hands  of  a  rather  anaemic  type  of  men  and 
women,  obsessed  by  a  sleepless  desire  to 
find  the  worm  of  evil  (of  one  particular 
species)  i'  the  bud  of  literature  ;  bent  seem- 
ingly upon  withholding  a  healthy,  all-round 
125 


WHAT   WE   PUT   UP  WITH 

knowledge  of  life,  that  might  better  instead 
be  looked  upon  as  the  surer  safeguard  of 
youth. 

This  passion  for  nothing  less  than  the 
elimination  of  "  sex  "  from  literature  has  at 
last  reached  the  point  of  fanaticism  ;  which, 
in  face  of  the  daily  countermining  of  our 
yellow  press,  is  fit  food  for  laughter  on 
Olympus. 

Within  a  year,  a  conversation  with  one 
of  the  assistant  librarians  in  a  branch  of  the 
largest  public  library  in  the  United  States 
developed  several  startling  facts.  During 
a  recent  administration  of  affairs  in  the 
"mother"  library,  of  more  than  average 
fanaticism,  the  "  non-replacement "  law  in- 
cluded "Little  Women"  in  its  list.  That 
is,  when  worn  out,  the  copies  were  not  to 
be  replaced.  "  David  Harum  "  and  those 
of  Dumas  that  are  the  most  worth  reading 
were  also  blacklisted. 

The  gradual  obscuration  of  "  The  Three 
Musketeers  "  was  bad  enough,  but  the  in- 
credible affront  to  Miss  Alcptt's  pure  taste 
12.6 


WHAT    WE    PUT   UP   WITH 

and  sound  judgment  passes  belief.  The 
reason  given  for  this  slow  eclipse  was  that 
there  was  "  too  much  love-making  in  it  for 
young  people"  —  adult  tax-payers  being 
allowed  no  voice !  Which  is  the  cleaner, 
healthier  course  —  to  withhold  from  our 
young  people  the  fact  that  there  is  love  to 
be  reckoned  with  in  the  world,  or  to  teach 
them  how  to  meet  it  with  the  sweet  sanity 
of  Louisa  Alcott's  Jo  and  Meg  and  Beth 
and  Laurie  and  the  dear  old  stuffy  Pro- 
fessor. For  come  it  will,  sooner  or  later, 
even  if  the  sedentary  librarian's  blood  is 
thin  and  stagnant. 

The  mind  capable  of  so  fanatic  a  decision 
is  heir  direct  to  the  minds  of  the  Massa- 
chusetts selectmen  of  1656,  who  fulmi- 
nated against  the  "  enormioss  crimes  "  of 
their  day,  among  which  was  the  sitting  to- 
gether on  the  Lord's  Day  of  a  maiden  and 
a  man,  under  an  apple  tree  in  "  Goodman 
Chapman's  orchard  " ;  or  to  that  delightful 
sentence  against  a  certain  dare-devil  Peter 
Bussaker,  of  the  same  year,  given  here- 
127 


WHAT   WE   PUT   UP   WITH 

with  in  behalf  of  the  shades  of  Louisa 
Alcott :  — 

"The  court  adjudgeth  Peter  Bussaker 
for  his  filthy  and  profane  expressions  (viz. 
that  he  hoped  to  mete  some  of  the  mem- 
bers of  the  church  in  hell  ere  long,  and  he 
did  not  question  but  he  should)  to  be  com- 
mitted to  prison,  there  to  be  kept  in  safe 
custody  till  the  sermon  [humor  at  least 
could  not  have  come  over  in  the  May- 
flower!], and  then  to  stand  in  the  time 
thereof  in  the  pillory  [no  light  sentence  in 
that  day !]  and  after  sermon  to  be  severely 
whipped." 

One's  sympathies  go  out  to  the  naughty 
Peter  in  his  sudden  frenzy  of  wrath  against 
his  small-minded  tormentors.  We  also  have 
ours  in  this  day  and  generation,  and  they 
often  mistake  temperamental  prejudice  for 
the  voice  of  the  Almighty. 

So  it  comes  to  pass  that  our  land  abounds 
in  the  dangerous  evil  of  unrestrained  license, 
side  by  side  with  th£  warping  evil  of  un- 
restrained Puritanism,  forgetting  that  "Lib- 
128 


WHAT   WE    PUT   UP   WITH 

erty  exists  in  proportion  to  wholesome  re- 
straint." 

If  a  publisher  chose  to  flood  the  market 
with  a  cheap  edition  of  "  Candide  "  or  the 
"  Heptameron  "  for  the  good  of  his  empty 
pocket,  how  long  before  he  would  feel  the 
hand  of  the  law  on  his  collar?  And  yet 
there  is  something  in  our  character  — 
"  dure  inintelligence  "  ?  —  which  grants  our 
most  objectionable  newspapers  absolute  im- 
munity from  the  same  law,  planting  more 
seeds  of  crime  in  the  hearts  of  our  youth 
than  ever  did  Voltaire,  or  Margaret  of  Na- 
varre, at  their  worst.  The  former  picture 
of  evil  is  a  photograph  of  next-door  life ; 
the  latter  are  paintings  dim  with  distance, 
seen  down  a  long  vista  of  time  ;  so  manure 
do  they  seem  that  their  deliberate  intention 
is  obscured.  And  yet  the  former  is  sold  for 
one  cent  to  hundreds  of  thousands,  the  latter 
locked  in  editions  de  luxe  behind  glass  doors. 

It  is  but  another  of  the  things  we  in- 
ertly put  up  with,  and  then  wonder  whence 
come  our  waves  of  crime. 
129 


Ill 

*'  Take  a  straw  and  throw  it  up  into  the  air,  you 
shall  see  by  that  which  way  the  wind  is  ;  which  you 
shall  not  do  by  casting  up  a  stone."  — JOHN  SELDEN. 

WE  put  up  with  a  deal  of  sham  street- 
cleaning  ;  one  immaculate  avenue  to  fifty 
filthy  cross-streets,  through  which  pass  only 
obscure  tax-payers,  too  fagged  to  protest. 
We  put  up  with  public  ash-carts,  cover- 
less  or  with  unused  or  inadequate  covers, 
into  which  barrels  of  refuse  are  heedlessly 
dumped  on  the  windiest  day.  There  are, 
to  be  sure,  sanitary  laws  against  all  of  these 
abuses,  but  they  too  are  not  enforced  by 
the  police,  save  on  the  aforesaid  immacu- 
late avenue.  And  the  Voice  of  the  People  ? 
It  is  seldom  heard  outside  of  the  market 
place.  To  be  sure,  at  the  next  election  the 
votes  go  to  a  man  who  promises  a  sanitary 
millennium,  and  fulfills  but  a  hundredth 
part  of  his  political  promise.  And  so  it 
130 


WHAT   WE   PUT   UP   WITH 

goes  on,  one  decade  after  another,  until  all 
sense  of  shame  has  gone  out  of  us.  "  The 
greatest  people  on  earth  "  have  not  one  city 
in  all  their  land  as  clean,  as  well  lighted,  as 
well  managed,  as  beautiful,  with  such  a 
street-car  system,  as  Buda-Pesth,  way  down 
in  Hungary,  not  to  stop  short  of  that. 

In  France,  Germany,  Norway  (where 
Christiania  has  an  enviable  reputation  in 
the  administration  of  sanitary  laws,  pointed 
out  in  1877  by  the  London  "Lancet") 
these  things  are  better  managed  than  with 
us ;  not  perhaps  better  in  theory,  but  un- 
doubtedly better  in  execution.  The  several 
American  commissions  which  have  gone 
to  Europe  from  time  to  time  have  stayed 
just  long  enough  to  discover  that  our  laws 
compare  favorably  with  theirs,  but  not  long 
enough  to  watch  the  difference  in  their 
enforcement;  and  they  return  to  proclaim 
their  entire  contentment  with  prevailing 
conditions,  and  so  prolong  them. 

We  put  up  with  the  uncovering  of  miles 
and  miles  of  streets,  torn  up  and  then  al- 


WHAT   WE   PUT   UP   WITH 

lowed  to  lie  untouched  for  months.  Hy- 
giene, the  interests  of  the  people,  are  sac- 
rificed to  our  own  particular  Moloch-poli- 
tics. Every  intelligent  adult  knows  perfectly 
well  why  these  things  are  done.  Knows 
that  the  public  is  made  to  wait  until  con- 
tractors come  to  terms  with  "  bosses  " ; 
until  such  time  as  the  workingman's  vote 
must  be  bought  by  the  bribe  of  mending 
those  miles  of  up-torn  streets. 

If  We,  the  People,  supposed  to  rule  this 
fair  land,  are  not  helpless  to  right  these 
wrongs,  then  our  shame  is  all  the  greater. 
There  must  be  some  great  impelling  force 
behind  the  street  commissioners  of  Paris, 
and  Vienna,  and  Berlin,  where  repairs  are 
made  in  an  unobtrusive,  rapid,  and  cleanly 
manner,  a  few  yards  at  a  time. 

Can  it  be  possible  that  the  broken- 
spirited  people  of  "  effete  "  Europe  have, 
in  truth,  more  power  than  those  of  "  the 
greatest  nation  on  earth  "  ? 

The  opinion  is  ventured  that  no  Euro- 
pean government  would  dare  stand  the 
132 


WHAT   WE   PUT   UP   WITH 

indignation  of  the  people  (albeit  down- 
trodden) if  twenty  miles  of  city  streets  were 
torn  up  at  once  and  left  for  twenty  months, 
until  a  set  of  politicians  had  made  their 
bargain. 

What  has  happened  to  "  the  govern- 
ment by  the  people  "  ?  Has  it  gone  out  of 
them  ?  Or  is  it  forgotten  in  the  pure  sav- 
agery of  money-getting  and  absolute  in- 
difference to  aught  beside? 

Such  a  condition  is  quite  conceivable  in 
a  young  country  like  ours  —  the  hustling 
untidy  West  of  the  world ;  it  is  cause  for 
censure  only  from  our  own  self-appointed 
standard  of  American  perfection. 

Every  word  of  honest  criticism  of  any- 
thing American ;  every  just  comparison 
between  this  country  and  any  other,  that 
does  not  instantly  end  in  self-laudation,  is 
considered  to  be  entirely  overwhelmed  by 
the  old  childish  cry  of:  "  We  're  the  great- 
est people  on  earth,  just  the  same  ! "  When 
that  comes,  the  only  adequate  reply  is  si- 
lence. A  child  has  spoken,  and  there  is 
r33 


WHAT   WE    PUT   UP   WITH 

nothing  to  do  but  smile,  and  wait  till  he 
grows  up.  Of  what  use  to  ask  his  defini- 
tions ?  Of  what  use  to  claim  that  true  pa- 
triotism is  but  love  and  suffers  when  the 
loved  one  stumbles  ?  Justified  by  a  great 
man's  opinion  that, — 

Love  is  never  blind,  but  rather 

Alive  to  every  minutest  spot 
Which  mars  its  object,  — 

and  believing  that  always  just  beyond  and 
above  a  great  love  lie  our  visions  of  per- 
fection, we  put  up  with  garbage  cast  upon 
the  waters  and  returning  to  us  after  many 
days.  We  put  up  with  the  turning  of  our 
parks  into  hideous  scenes  of  filth  and  dis- 
order every  public  holiday.  To  the  reply 
that  this  constant  breaking  of  our  sanitary 
laws  is  done  by  Italians,  Germans,  Swiss, 
and  Swedes,  I  would  state  from  personal 
knowledge  that  none  of  these  people  would 
dare  to  commit  such  misdemeanors  in  their 
own  native  lands.  Why  ?  Because  of  fear 
of  laws  that  are  rigidly  enforced. 

They  soon  find  over  here  that  our  bas- 
134 


WHAT   WE    PUT   UP   WITH 

kets  and  barrels,  provided  for  such  picnic 
refuse,  are  symbolic  of  our  park  laws  —  and 
as  empty. 

After  every  public  holiday  it  costs  our 
larger  cities  many  hundreds  of  dollars  to 
clean  up.  Would  it  not  be  more  intelligent 
to  use  that  entirely  unnecessary  yearly  tax 
towards  filling  in  the  all  too  meagre  ranks 
of  our  police  force  ?  If  the  people  knew 
that  every  infringement  of  the  law  would 
be  met  by  an  arrest  and  a  fine,  the  public 
catch-all  would  not  stand  an  empty  mock- 
ery of  law  and  order. 

Kew  Gardens,  when  the  sunset  call 
sounds,  are  soon  emptied  of  their  thou- 
sands ;  and  are  as  spotless  when  the  gates 
are  closed  as  when  they  were  thrown 
open. 

We  put  up  with  unbelievable  imperti- 
nence from  conductors  and  motormen, 
porters,  brakemen,  and  cab-drivers,  from 
one  end  of  our  Middle  States  to  the  other. 
In  the  south  and  west  and  in  New  Eng- 
land these  petty  officials  may  be  familiar, 
135 


WHAT   WE   PUT   UP   WITH 

but  they  are  less  often  outrageously  rough 
and  uncivil. 

In  the  general  absorption  in  business, 
such  a  thing  soon  becomes  a  mere  peu  de 
chose,  quickly  forgotten ;  and  presently  in- 
sensibility replaces  just  indignation. 

If  complaint  is  made,  nine  times  out  of 
ten,  the  further  indifference,  or  even  im- 
pertinence, of  corporations  shows  plainly 
whence  comes  the  temerity  of  their  liege- 
men. The  fact  that  a  conductor's  insolence 
has  recently  met  with  well-deserved  pun- 
ishment, and  that  the  sentence  has  been 
greeted  with  loud  acclaim  from  California 
to  Florida,  tells  its  own  story. 

Five  years  ago,  in  New  York  City,  a 
scene  took  place  in  a  Sixth  Avenue  surface 
car  going  south,  so  shameful  that  if  the 
writer  had  not  seen  it,  she  would  have  hesi- 
tated long  before  repeating  it. 

There  were  about  twenty  people  in  the 
car,  most  of  them  coming  under  the  an- 
thropologic  classification :  "  man  —  the  aris- 
tocrat amongst  the  animals ! "  A  thin, 
136 


WHAT   WE    PUT   UP   WITH 

shabby,  but  cleanly  little  woman  got  in 
about  Twentieth  Street :  a  foreigner,  not 
long  with  us,  feeling  very  much  alone  in 
the  great  strange  city.  There  was  some- 
thing Russian,  something  German,  in  her 
face,  and  so  it  turned  out.  Her  eyes  were 
strained  with  fright,  her  pathetic  mouth 
told  its  story  of  much  work  and  very  little 
love  in  her  long  life.  What  is  more  to  the 
point,  there  was  about  her  the  inseparable 
dignity  of  honest  living,  which  entitles  a 
woman  to  respectful  treatment  right  round 
the  civilized  world. 

In  very  broken  English  she  timidly  asked 
the  conductor  if  she  was  on  the  South 
Ferry  car. 

"Cough  it  up,  old  lady,  where  I  can 
handle  what  yer  say ! "  was  the  courteous 
reply,  shouted  out  for  the  benefit  of  the 
car.  Naturally  she  did  not  understand, 
but  the  fear  in  her  eyes  grew,  her  thin 
weary  face  flushed  at  this  very  untidy  uni- 
formed brute's  manner  and  his  impudent 
grin.  His  glance  gathered  in  the  audience 
'37 


WHAT    WE    PUT   UP   WITH 

his  vanity  craved,  while  he  amused  him- 
self "joshing  one  of  them  dagoes,"  as  all 
foreigners  are  called  by  that  class  of  our 
citizens. 

The  little  woman  asked  her  question 
again,  trembling  pitifully.  Again  that  arti- 
cled brigand  mocked  her :  "  Oh,  so  you  lik- 
a-go-a  Slouthy  Ferry  ?  Well,  all  I  can  say 
is  y  ou  're  on  the  wrong-a  car  " ;  and  he  passed 
on ! 

And  several  of  the  listening  workmen 
laughed.  There  might  have  been  a  dying 
child  at  the  end  of  herj  ourney  for  aught  they 
knew ;  but  they  laughed,  sunk  in  the  insensi- 
bility of  habitual  usage  to  such  scenes,  and 
with  a  Chinese  hatred  of  foreigners  in  all 
their  hearts. 

The  look  in  the  eyes  of  that  helpless 
stranger  somehow  suggested  the  knout, — 
that  other  knout  not  much  more  brutish 
than  these  brave  American  citizens'  jeers. 
The  utter  uselessness  of  either  immediate 
feminine  indignation,  or  of  later  written  or 
personal  protest  to  the  railroad  company 
138 


WHAT   WE   PUT   UP   WITH 

was  a  lesson  which  had  been  thoroughly  and 
ignominiously  learned  years  before.  With 
patriotism  at  vanishing-point  one  beheld 
that  baiting  of  this  stranger  within  our  gates. 
It  was  one  more  of  the  outrages  that  we  put 
up  with. 

To  cross  the  car,  after  one  sharp  word  to 
the  conductor  (at  which  he  grinned),  to  bring 
something  that  was  perhaps  once  a  smile 
when  she  was  young,  to  the  pitiful  old  face, 
by  a  few  words  in  wretched  German  which 
happily  she  understood,  was  all  that  was  left 
to  be  done.  To  go  out  of  one's  way  for  some- 
thing over  an  hour  to  put  the  lost  wanderer 
on  her  ferry,  to  leave  her  alternately  waving 
a  little  rag  of  a  handkerchief  and  wiping  her 
eyes  in  sudden  revulsion  of  feeling  in  favor 
of  these  terrible  "  States,"  was  the  very  least 
that  could  be  done  to  clear  the  name  of  one's 
country. 

But  to  clear  one's  own  conscience  of  that 
shrinking  feminine  weakness  of  non-inter- 
ference, that  stultifying  of  one's  righteous 
longing  personally  to  punish  that  licensed 


WHAT   WE   PUT    UP   WITH 

brute,  has  left  a  burning  in  the  heart  which 
five  years  have  not  extinguished.  There  still 
remains  that  punishment  to  be  given  !  Is  it 
possible  that  the  barest  decencies  of  civilized 
life  can  be  held  up  with  impunity  every  day 
in  our  largest  city  ?  Are  we  really  helpless 
to  stop  this  growing  reversion  to  semi-bar- 
barism? Of  what  use  to  plead  that  the  men 
in  that  car  were  weary  workmen  ?  Time  is  a 
very  soluble  sort  of  thing  in  men's  hands, 
and  undoubtedly  "the  peasant  is  a  being  of 
more  marked  national  character  than  man 
the  educated  and  refined." 

To  have  one's  words  mocked  to  one's  face 
anywhere  in  Europe  or  in  the  seaports  of 
Asia,  by  a  uniformed  official,  is  almost  in- 
conceivable. It  ill  behooves  us  to  appropri- 
ate the  words  "  Christian,"  and  "civilized," 
and  to  apply  so  recklessly  the  words  "sav- 
age "  and  "  pagan  "  when  we  speak  of  cer- 
tain other  nations. 

What  is  wrong?  Are  we  North  Ameri- 
cans after  all,  as  has  been  written  of  us, 
merely  a  political  experiment,  but  socially 
140 


WHAT   WE   PUT   UP   WITH 

impossible?  Even  "the  greatest  nation  on 
earth"  may  be  all  of  that,  and  yet  not  be 
above  improvement. 

But  we  are  not  talking  politics  nor  poli- 
cies— just  policing. 


141 


IV 

"  Our  proper  business  is  improvement.*'  — WEBSTER. 

STRANGELY  enough,  there  are  nations  in 
the  world  to-day  which  regard  the  United 
States  and  the  working  out  of  its  institu- 
tions very  much  as  we  are  watching  Japan 
and  her  institutions.  We  are  both  "  inter- 
esting experiments." 

Within  twenty  years  it  has  been  said  of  us 
by  a  great  critic:  "In  what  concerns  the 
higher  civilization,  they  live  in  a  fool's  para- 
dise." And  again :  "For  the  real  faults  in 
American  civilization,  and  for  the  foolish 
boasting  which  prolongs  them,  there  is 
hardly  a  word  of  regret  or  blame  —  at  least 
in  public;  although  for  political  opponents 
there  are  plenty  of  hard  words." 

There  are  grave  questions  to  be  solved 
before  we  have  proved  our  right  to  endure 
as  the  ideal  of  republican  government. 

If  our  citizens  have  found  that  they  have 
142 


WHAT   WE   PUT   UP   WITH 

not  the  time  to  enforce  our  laws  of  sanitation 
(that  are  worse  than  worthless  unless  en- 
forced); if  they  find  themselves  over- 
whelmed by  mere  routine  questions  of  mu- 
nicipal government,  from  whence  is  to  come 
the  time  and  the  strength  to  solve  those 
supreme  tests  of  our  Republic,  which  lie 
across  the  path  of  our  immediate  future. 
Must  we  wait  inertly  for  time  to  rectify  the 
terrible  error  of  1 868  ?  How  long  are  we  to 
remain  helpless  under  that  act  of  political 
unwisdom  ?  How  long  is  it  to  remain  the 
policy  of  the  party  in  power  to  hide  from 
the  nation  the  fact  that  Mormonism  is  one- 
tenth  religious,  and  nine-tenths  a  rapidly 
spreading  political  power  all  through  the 
West?  How  long  will  the  Mormons  daily 
break  their  oath  to  the  United  States,  and 
laugh  softly  in  their  sleeves  ?  A  physician 
once  said : "  Nature  always  gives  many  warn- 
ings of  an  impending  illness,  if  we  would 
but  heed  them." 

Anarchy  and  class-hatred  have  raised 
their  heads  more  and  more  frequently  with 
H3 


WHAT   WE   PUT   UP   WITH 

every  twelvemonth.  Is  it  the  part  of  supe- 
rior wisdom  to  take  no  heed  of  these  warn- 
ings ?  Twice  the  writer  has  come  into  a  sud- 
den close  contact  with  the  hidden  spirit  of 
a  bas  les  autresl  Once  in  Hong  Kong,  on 
the  Queen's  Road,  exactly  five  months  be- 
fore the  Boxer  outbreak  against  foreigners, 
which  was  telepathically  felt  to  be  impend- 
ing, and  so  prophesied  at  the  time.  The  sec- 
ond time  was  in  a  manufacturing  town  within 
an  hour  by  rail  of  New  York  City.  A  mere 
passer-by,  an  old  woman  in  the  factory  dis- 
trict, with  the  face  of  a  furious  dame  des 
Hallesy  and  a  growl  of  hate,  used  her  vigor- 
ous elbow  as  did  the  foreigner-hating  China- 
man on  the  Queen's  Road,  and  in  both  cases 
the  passing  victim  landed  fairly  in  the  street, 
innocent  of  all  but  temporary  amazement. 
Contemplation  followed  later. 

How  long  will  it  be  before  the  nation  not 
only  sees  but  acts  upon  the  already  obvi- 
ous fact  that  we  are  no  longer  assimilating 
our  immigration  ? 

The  vital  necessity  of  reform  in  the  ad- 
144 


WHAT   WE    PUT    UP   WITH 

ministration  of  our  criminal  laws  could  not 
well  speak  more  loudly  than  it  recently  has 
in  two  flagrant  miscarriages  of  justice.  A 
brief  comparison  between  the  large  percent- 
age of  the  guilty  who  have  the  law  executed 
against  them  in  England  and  the  small  per- 
centage in  this  country,  tells  the  story. 

How  much  longer  can  we  afford  to  wait 
before  our  foreign  policy  becomes  a  fixed 
— instead  of  a  floating — rib  in  the  body 
politic  ? 

All  the  necessary  energies  are  within  us, 
and  we  have  a  long  life  ahead  of  us  in 
which  to  improve,  if  we  take  Robert  Brown- 
ing's horologe  :  "  What  comes  to  perfec- 
tion perishes/'  A  little  less  time  in  the 
market-place,  and  more  in  the  court-house; 
a  little  less  complacency ;  a  little  rubbing 
of  the  eyes  to  clear  away  the  somnolence 
of  habit ;  a  concentration  of  our  tremen- 
dous spiritual  and  monetary  resources  upon 
our  own  heathen;  some  rehabilitation  of 
laws  existing ;  some  changes  from  state  to 
federal  responsibility  (our  motley  divorce 


WHAT   WE    PUT   UP   WITH 

laws  are  pure  opera-bouffe) ;  a  standing 
back  from  and  judging  some  of  our  legal 
fetishes  —  for  instance,  trial  by  jury,  as  we 
so  signally  maladminister  it ;  a  destroying 
of  some  of  the  old  outgrown  ideals  of  our 
Republic,  and  taking  down  and  dusting 
tenderly  certain  others  —  and  the  man  who 
cries,  "The  greatest  nation  on  earth,"  need 
not  defiantly  add,  "all  the  same  ! " 

Long  ago  Henry  Ward  Beecher  said, 
among  several  things,  one  worth  consider- 
ing:"  American  patriotism  must  be  a  house- 
hold virtue."  Somewhat  diverting  his  mani- 
fest meaning  (and  disclaiming  at  once  any 
predilection  for  the  wearing  of  togas  over 
petticoats  !)  may  it  not  be  asked,  merely  in 
the  name  of  good  housekeeping:  If  the 
men  in  this  country  are  admittedly  over- 
worked by  money-getting  and  family  duties, 
civic  duties,  state  duties,  national  duties 
(and  some  of  their  achievements  do  sug- 
gest fatigue  !)  why  should  not  some  of  the 
women  —  well  named  our  "leisure  class" 
— lend  them  a  hand  ? 
146 


WHAT   WE   PUT   UP   WITH 

It  has  looked  of  late  as  if  the  growing 
energies,  and  marked  intelligence  of  some 
of  our  women,  hungry  for  serious  work, 
were  about  to  find  an  outlet,  —  big  with 
possibility, —  not  always  in  making  new 
laws,  but  in  bending  their  unquestioned 
strength  toward  seeing  that  those  existent 
are  not  suffered  to  be  buried  alive.  Sev- 
eral efforts  in  these  directions  have  already 
borne  good  fruit :  the  suppression  of  un- 
necessary noise,  the  protection  of  children 
and  dumb  animals  from  man's  cruelty ; 
and  several  others,  thus  far  less  rewarded 
by  well-deserved  success.  Enough,  how- 
ever, has  been  accomplished  to  show  that 
our  unusual  women  can  do  unusual  work? 
and  do  it  well  enough  to  become  the  help- 
mates of  many  men,  if  not  needing  all  their 
strength  for  one. 

Improvement  will  not  grow  in  the  sands 
of  complacency.  "  The  conceit  of  progress 
.  .  .  becomes  a  dangerous  obstacle  to  its 
reality,"  has  been  wisely  written  of  success. 


BEHIND   THE   TIMES 


BEHIND   THE   TIMES 

"  Time  is  the  highest  finite  good  in  which  all  finite 
things  are  resolved."  — VON  HUMBOLDT. 

THE  key  of  life's  harmonies  changes  with 
each  generation ;  also  the  nomenclature. 
The  Present  carries,  for  a  little,  the  melody 
(as  did  the  Past  in  its  day),  presently  to  be 
lost  in  the  oncoming  flood  of  distant  har- 
mony set  in  another  key  —  the  key  of  the 
Future.  The  great  maestro  Time  alone  can 
turn  it  all  into  the  endless  melody  that  in- 
tertwines in  growing  intricacy  as  the  cen- 
turies pass.  And  there  is  no  discord;  be- 
cause what  one  generation  calls  cacophony 
the  next  recognizes  and  re-names  —  when 
it  is  seen  that  "  all  conspires  to  the  utter- 
ance of  manifold  harmony." 

What  was  called  witchcraft  yesterday,  is 
to-day  psychic  phenomena ;  to-morrow  it 
will  be  experimental  science  ;  and  for  aught 


BEHIND   THE  TIMES 

we  know  to  the  contrary  it  will  be  as  famil- 
iar as  plumbing  in  ages  to  come. 

There  is  every  indication  that  there  will 
be  several  electric  buttons  on  our  library 
walls  in  about  2000  A.  D.  :  one  to  sum- 
mon one's  aerial  car  for  a  spin  on  a  fine 
windy  morning;  one  for  a  five  o'clock 
gossip  with  a  fair  friend  in  London ;  and  a 
third,  to  turn  on,  toward  eight  o'clock,  the 
overture  of  a  premiere  in  St.  Petersburg, 
or  to  learn  of  the  relache  owing  to  the  ill- 
ness of  her  Excellency,  the  President's 
wife !  * 

It  makes  no  difference  how  steadfastly 
youth  studies  day  and  night  the  collated 
knowledge  of  his  generation;  norhowman- 
hood  hustles  and  elbows  along  the  high- 
ways,—  we  are  always  behind  the  times, 
we,  the  great  army  of  averages.  But  there 
are  always  intellectual  scouts  far  out  ahead 
of  us,  listening  in  the  dark,  and  they  alone 
hear  strange  new  things,  whisperings  of 
which  slowly  come  back  to  us,  even  when 
we  are  among  the  little  children  and  the 
152 


BEHIND   THE   TIMES 

women  and  the  general  impedimenta  in  the 
rear. 

The  writer  remembers  well  when  the 
first  very  superficial  understanding  of  a 
great  man's  life-work,  made  of  Darwin  little 
more  than  that  unspeakable  thing  in  those 
days  —  an  Atheist ;  written  always  with 
a  capital,  as  was  the  Devil.  We  deny  the 
latter  personage  to-day  this  honorific,  per- 
haps because  we  fear  him  less;  perhaps 
because  we  have  discovered  that  his  home 
is  within  our  own  souls,  and  are  not  hon- 
orifics  reserved  alone  for  the  second  and 
third  person  ? 

The  "Index  Librorum  Prohibitorum " 
of  1564  put  back  the  progress  of  civiliza- 
tion several  centuries.  The  only  Index  of 
to-day  is  one's  own  measure  of  intelligence, 
and  that  does  not  put  back  the  progress  of 
civilization  an  hour,  as  happily  to-day,  in 
the  life  intellectual,  if  not  in  the  life  politi- 
cal, minorities  rule. 

There  are  always  minds  to  whom  seventy- 
and-five  books  out  of  every  hundred  are 
153 


BEHIND   THE   TIMES 

forever  forbidden  by  the  rigid  natural  limi- 
tations of  those  minds  themselves ;  there 
is  no  longer  need  of  a  Pope  Pius  IV. 

There  came  a  later  day,  in  1877,  when 
we  were  told  of  the  absurd  claims  of  a  cer- 
tain American  as  to  an  invention  he  tenta- 
tively called  a  "  phonograph."  The  funny 
papers  of  the  day  rejoiced  and  were  exceed- 
ing glad  and  grateful,  and  their  wits  and 
artists  waxed  very  industrious.  The  scien- 
tists, however,  held  their  peace,  and  waited 
a  little;  and  then  came  out  of  their  labora- 
tories and  took  the  discoverer  by  the  hand. 
And  the  small  wits  and  artists  retired; 
and  they,  in  their  turn,  waited  awhile,  for 
art  of  that  kind  must  be  au  courant,  or  find 
some  other  work  to  do. 

On  an  overland  trip  coming  from  Japan 
in  1888,  we  were  told  to  watch  carefully 
while  passing  through  Lima,  Ohio,  as  that 
town  had  taken  its  life  in  its  hands,  so  to 
speak,  and  was  rashly  experimenting  with 
a  partly  understood  power  wherewith  to 
run  the  street-cars,  and  the  result  was  an 
154 


BEHIND   THE   TIMES 

amazing  thing  called  "  a  trolley."  And 
heaven  was  kind  to  us,  and  all  that  trainful 
of  watchers  saw  the  horseless  uncanny  thing 
stop  near  the  railway  station,  awaiting  our 
passing.  And  there  went  with  us  on  our 
way  abundant  food  for  talk  for  many  hours. 

Our  grandparents  in  the  year  1822  fought 
the  introduction  of  gas,  which  began  first 
to  be  manufactured  in  this  country  in  that 
year,  in  the  city  of  Boston ;  and  there  are 
many  to-day  who  still  mortally  fear  to  re- 
ceive into  the  family  circle  electricity. 

Only  one  generation  back  of  us  fought 
sturdily  against  the  introduction  into  our 
houses  of  hot  and  cold  water.  I  remember 
hearing  an  old  gentlewoman  tell  of  the 
dare-devil  courage  of  her  lord,  who,  some- 
where about  1854,  sent  her  and  the  chil- 
dren to  the  seashore  ;  and  while  they  were 
there,  secretly  jeopardized  his  life — and 
that  of  their  home — by  having  installed 
a  kitchen  boiler  and  a  bath-tub,  he  mean- 
while remaining  in  residence ! 

"  It  was  a  mercy  he  was  spared,"  she 
155 


BEHIND   THE   TIMES 

ended  devoutly.  Which  indeed  was  a  ver- 
ity, as  there  were  many  rash  experiments 
in  those  days  with  only  partly  compre- 
hended forces.  It  is  also  probable  that  the 
gods  are  to-day  holding  their  breath  at  our 
own  daily  hairbreadth  escapes  as  we  play 
or  work  with  electricity,  radium,  X-rays, 
and  other  elements  and  forces  doubtless 
existent  but  still  hidden  from  us.  For  sci- 
ence often  does  its  best  work  on  a  very 
narrow  ledge,  with  death  on  either  side. 

There  is  much  love,  and  also  a  great  deal 
of  pity,  bridging  the  gaps  between  the 
three  living  generations.  But  one  perfectly 
sympathizes  only  with  one's  own  genera- 
tion ;  is  mentally  en  rapport  only  with  one's 
own  times. 

A  man  tells  a  contemporary  his  thought, 
sure  of  his  understanding ;  while  he  very 
seldom  tells  either  his  own  father,  or  his 
own  son.  His  father  is  apt  to  depreciate, 
his  son  either  to  overestimate,  or  also  to 
depreciate;  only  one's  friend  appreciates 
justly.  The  consciousness  of  being  over- 
156 


BEHIND   THE   TIMES 

estimated  is  as  demoralizing  as  the  con- 
sciousness of  being  under-estimated.  Both 
attitudes  are  bereft  of  peace  and  natural- 
ness. For  with  his  son  a  sensitive  man  is 
apt  to  tiptoe  up  to  the  required  level  of  his 
offspring's  ideal  of  him,  or  to  sink  down  in 
silence  to  the  level  of  his  father's  instinct- 
ively light  estimate  of  him  —  saving  his 
real  self  for  those  of  his  own  generation. 

Only  when  we  can  stand  level  with  an- 
other, eye  to  eye,  can  there  be  real  mental 
companionship,  and  that  peace  of  soul  that 
is  "  liberty  in  tranquillity." 

In  all  these  relationships  between  two 
minds,  there  is  undoubtedly  telepathic  ac- 
tion and  reaction,  which  we,  in  the  Western 
world,  are  only  beginning  to  recognize  as 
a  source  of  immense  power. 

It  used  to  be  a  common  saying  that 
trust  begets  the  right  to  be  trusted, — 
grading  the  phenomenon  as  moral.  Nowa- 
days we  know  that  such  mental  transmuta- 
tions are  brought  about  by  psychic,  not 
moral,  laws.  And  a  psychic  law  is  moral , 
157 


BEHIND   THE   TIMES 

only  in  its  effect :  in  itself  it  has  no  inherent 
good  or  bad  socialistic  qualities,  any  more 
than  carbonic  acid  gas,  which  does  not  fly 
to  the  floor  for  the  benefit  of  men  seated 
in  chairs,  but  in  response  to  law. 

The  labyrinth  ahead  of  us  in  telepathy 
and  suggestion  alone ;  the  coming  cross- 
currents of  moral  responsibility ;  the  barely 
acknowledged  power  for  good  or  evil,  which 
are  among  the  demonstrated  physical,  and 
also  ethical,  effects  of  these  esoteric  forces, 
make  one  grateful  for  Nature's  kindly  way 
of  telling  her  secrets  to  us  very  slowly, 
a  few  words  at  a  time,  with  long  pauses 
between. 

Strangely  enough,  life,  even  in  the  midst 
of  the  present  orgy  of  materialism,  is  be- 
coming more  and  more  governed  by  im- 
material forces. 

Bulk  is  known  to  be  no  longer  the  true 
measurement  of  atomic  force.  The  mam- 
moth catapults,  or  bombards,  of  the  Mid- 
dle Ages  are  replaced  by  a  tiny  electric 
current,  placed  at  almost  any  level,  which 
158 


BEHIND   THE   TI.MES 

starts  and  sends  a  thousand  pounds  of 
steel  on  a  five-mile  journey  through  the 
air,  and  drops  it  as  exactly  as  if  the  catapul- 
tier  of  to-day  were  watching  with  his  naked 
eyes  the  whole  ballistic  curve,  from  the 
muzzle  of  the  great  gun  to  the  final  scene 
of  awful  destruction. 

The  enormous  radio-activity  of  radium 
is  the  latest  half-comprehended  secret  es- 
caped from  Time's  great  storehouse,  still 
packed  full  of  awful  mysteries. 

The  day  of  the  horse  as  a  draught  ani- 
mal has  been  superseded  by  that  of  a  power 
invisible  save  in  its  phenomena.  Wires  now 
in  turn  have  begun  to  be  replaced  by  cur- 
rents of  air,  so  long  unsuspected  of  any 
such  potency.  The  whole  tendency  is  to- 
ward the  replacement  of  bulk  by  other 
energies,  coming  slowly  to  us  through  the 
centuries.  The  measurement  in  horse- 
power of  the  energies  called  electricity  and 
nitro-glycerine,  gives  the  cue  to  the  imme- 
diate future. 

It  is  not  inconceivable  that  the  time  will 


BEHIND   THE   TIMES 

come  when,  in  place  of  two  opposing  gen- 
erals, our  wars  will  be  waged  between  two 
military  Rosenthals  seated  ten  miles  apart, 
each  busy  with  his  own  set  of  electric  keys 
connected  with  the  opposing  batteries.  In- 
fantry, cavalry,  dispensed  with,  and  only 
an  army  of  grave-diggers  at  hand  to  bury 
the  slain  artillerymen  between  the  lines  ! 

Cities  will  be  battered  down,  just  the 
same  as  in  the  old  days,  and  the  blood- 
letting and  the  money-letting  will  cool  the 
temper  of  politicians,  and  Peace  will  finally 
come,  clothed  and  in  her  right  mind,  and 
reign  once  more. 

If  a  boy  reads  his  Froissart  and  then 
turns  to  the  siege  of  Port  Arthur,  he  can 
feel  the  rapid  current  of  human  develop- 
ment rushing  by  like  a  mountain  torrent. 
Jules  Verne  has  turned,  within  twenty 
years,  from  a  jester  into  a  prophet ;  and 
even  he  is  now  left  far  "  behind  the  times." 

The  "Arabian  Nights'*  is  no  longer  the 
compendium  of  the  marvelous.  There  is 
nothing  in  it  so  startling  as  the  revelations 
160 


BEHIND   THE   TIMES 

of  what  we  call  modern  science.  If  Sche- 
herazade had  had  the  telegraph,  photogra- 
phy, steam,  electricity,  the  phonograph,  the 
telephone,  to  fall  back  upon  conversation- 
ally, she  need  never  have  felt  nervous  of 
her  tenure  of  life,  at  the  hands  of  her  hus- 
band, Sultan  of  India. 

What  is  there  in  the  one  thousand  and 
one  tales  to  compare  with  wireless  telegra- 
phy ?  or  with  the  humiliating  exposure  of 
a  living  man's  skeleton  to  the  more  or  less 
unsympathetic  eye  of  his  friend  ? 

The  miracles  of  long  ago  are  the  experi- 
ments in  the  physical  sciences  to-day  ;  and 
perhaps  in  the  future  will  be  gathered  to- 
gether in  a  handy-book,  like  household 
recipes,  or  "  First  Aids  to  the  Injured." 

The  Present  always  stands  on  the  narrow- 
est space  there  is  for  human  footing.  The 
Past  and  the  Future  encroach  closely  before 
and  behind,  and  there  is  no  turning  round. 

The  French  physician  who  to-day  uses 
hypnotism  in  place  of  anaesthetics  in  the 
hospitals,  and  the  American  physician,  of 
161 


BEHIND   THE   TIMES 

undoubted  probity  and  high  standing,  who 
uses  psychic  suggestion  for  moral  cures, 
would  both  have  been  burned  as  malevolent 
wizards  not  so  very  long  ago.  To-day  they 
stand  for  good,  working  in  a  half-light,  but 
scientifically ;  claiming  no  more  than  dem- 
onstrable phenomena;  humble  always,  be- 
cause they  see  in  it  the  mere  alphabet  of 
future  socialistic  science.  They  are  the 
"medical  missionaries"  of  the  generations 
to  come. 

It  almost  seems  as  if  objective  religion, 
the  objective  aids  to  redemption  of  the  past, 
were  about  to  be  replaced  by  the  discovery 
that  evil  is  to  be  controlled  by  a  power  en- 
tirely within  us,  adequate  to  the  task,  but 
hitherto  unsuspected. 

The  subjective  cures  claimed  by  Chris- 
tian Science  owe  most  of  their  force  to  the 
fact  that  this  is  the  exact  age  for  the  rooting 
of  such  subjective  theories. 

It  is  the  age  of  the  glorifying  of  individ- 
ualism, introspection;  the  exact  moment 
when  we  are  discarding,  one  by  one,  visible 
162 


BEHIND   THE   TIMES 

powers  of  all  sorts,  for  the  physico-invisible, 
and  the  occult. 

Fifty  years  ago  Eddyism  would  have  been 
laughed  quickly  out  of  existence;  fifty  years 
hence  what  modicum  of  truth  there  is  in  it 
will  have  quite  another  nomenclature.  A 
very  ordinary  woman  has  happened  to  plant 
her  propaganda  of  half-truths  at  the  exact 
psychologic  moment  best  for  its  growth ; 
just  as  "  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,"  a  very  ordi- 
nary novel,  full  also  of  half-truths,  fell  in 
soil  ripe  for  it. 

Some  of  the  so-called  great  books  of  the 
world  owe  their  reputation  to  a  genius  for 
timeliness.  If  a  Bunyan  began  to-day  to  hunt 
for  a  publisher,  he  would  pass  through  many 
a  Slough  of  Despond  before  he  found  one. 

Once  started,  the  mere  impetus  of  re- 
nown keeps  them  rolling  on ;  as  a  success- 
ful writer  finds  a  ready  sale  for  his  schoolboy 
compositions. 

Every  new  discovery  in  science  leaves  the 
young  people  stimulated  and  eager;  the 
middle-aged,  doubting  and  slow  to  assimi- 


BEHIND   THE   TIMES 

late ;  the  old,  bewildered  and  inclined  to 
feel  too  weary  to  catch  up  with  the  times. 
They  know  that  they  are  too  late,  too  tired 
out ;  they  in  their  turn  find  that  they  assimi- 
late not  merely  slowly,  but  no  more !  The 
key  has  changed.  What  was  once  harmony  is 
now,  to  the  old,  jangling  discord.  Silence  is 
the  only  music  to  ears  that  have  heard  too 
much. 

The  spiritual  things  are  few  which  sur- 
vive the  funeral  of  a  dead  generation  before 
the  installation  in  full  power  of  the  next. 

Truth,  honesty,  courage,  are  simple  hu- 
man qualities  that  withstand  the  assaults  of 
time.  Every  experiment  with  them  ends  in 
the  same  way.  They  are  as  clear-cut  as  dia- 
monds in  form,  and  as  indestructible.  No 
sane  person  can  be  excused  for  confusion 
regarding  them. 

But  there  are  very  many  minor  moral, 
ethical,  and  artistic  points  left  undecided  in 
the  last  will  and  testament  of  a  dead  gen- 
eration. Anything  that  comes  under  the 
head  of  emotion  is  so  much  a  matter  of  tem- 
164 


BEHIND   THE   TIMES 

perament  and  heredity  that  it  does  not  so 
easily  crystallize.  The  dominance  and  treat- 
ment of  woman,  for  example,  so  different 
at  different  periods  in  the  history  of  civili- 
zation, has  not  yet  settled  into  any  exact 
law,  any  exact  code.  Racial  and  national 
prejudicesjoin  with  individual  temperament 
and  prevent  the  question  of  man's  relations 
to  woman  from  being  very  much  more  set- 
tled to-day  than  it  was  in  the  days  of  Moses. 
The  injunction,  "Thou  shalt  not  covet  thy 
neighbor's  wife,"  joined  with  that  against 
the  taking  of  his  ox  or  his  ass,  has  not  been 
greatly  improved  upon  to-day,  except  in 
form  ;  save  for  the  modern  recognition  of 
the  fact  that  the  ox  and  the  ass  have  no 
volition  in  the  matter,  and  it  has  come  to 
be  acknowledged  that  the  wife  has  !  So  it 
comes  to  pass  that,  in  this  particular,  a  man 
does  not  find  any  very  great  fundamental 
differences  between  his  grandfather's  rela- 
tions to  women,  his  father's,  and  his  own. 
It  is  as  much  a  matter  of  temperament  as 
it  was  with  St.  Paul. 

165 


BEHIND   THE   TIMES 

In  other  matters  the  three  generations  are 
ages  apart  in  both  theory  and  practice.  Apart 
in  dress  of  a  Sunday  morning :  the  grand- 
father in  his  frock  coat  and  silk  hat,  going 
to  church  ("for  the  example,"  he  admits 
solemnly) ;  the  father  in  his  sack-coat  and 
derby,  bound  for  his  club ;  the  son  in  his 
golf  flannels  or  rubber  coat,  Prussian  cap, 
and  goggles,  bent  on  the  worship  of  Fresh 
Air  and  Exercise,  to  whom  church  and  club 
are  equally  stuffy  and  "  behind  the  times." 

Nor  can  the  same  small  library  supply 
the  three  generations  with  reading.  Grand- 
father still  reads,  and  alas  !  still  quotes,  his 
Byron.  He  is  steeped  to  his  finger-tips  with 
Lord  Chesterfield  if  he  likes  people,  and 
with  Wordsworth  if  he  likes  Nature.  He 
dearly  loves  to  read  aloud  from  his  calf- 
bound  volumes  of  Shakespeare,  Lamb,  and 
Shelley ;  and  to  read  to  himself  from  Field- 
ing, Smollett,  or  Gil  Bias.  "  Egad  !  has  any 
one  written  anything  since?"  He  cares 
mightily  for  the  sounds  of  words,  less  for 
the  sense.  He  has  heard  no  singing  worth 
166 


BEHIND   THE   TIMES 

the  name,  since  Giulia  Grisi  and  Mario; 
seen  no  acting  since  Cushman  and  Ristori 
and  Edwin  Booth.  The  grandfather  can 
have  no  serious  conversation  with  his  mid- 
dle-ageds  on  either  politics,  religion,  art, 
or  literature,  without  furious  argument. 
The  former  is  so  hopelessly  behind  the 
times!  The  latter  is  so  shallow  and  flip- 
pant! 

So  the  father  surrounds  himself  with 
books  and  friends  to  his  own  liking.  He 
has  a  library  on  the  Civil  War,  and  the 
biographies  of  the  generals  on  both  sides. 
He  re-reads  "The  Newcomes"  or  "The 
Tale  of  Two  Cities"  when  he  wants  a 
novel;  Tennyson  and  Longfellow  are  his 
poets,  Smiles  and  Hamerton  his  essayists. 
But  of  them  all  he  prefers  the  books  of  the 
four  great  English  scientists  of  the  age. 
He  seeks  the  men  of  his  own  taste  in  jokes, 
politics,  and  habits,  at  his  clubs. 

And  the  grandson  in  turn  smiles  down 
upon  his  father  and  grandfather  alike,  and 
speaks  a  different  language  from  them  both, 


BEHIND   THE   TIMES 

thinks  different  thoughts,  reads  different 
books,  holds  other  ideals.  He  belongs  in 
every  fibre  to  his  own  time,  and  takes  seri- 
ously only  four  things  in  life :  work,  health, 
modern  science,  and  sport.  He  takes  his 
automobile  weeklies,  reads  his  automobile 
novels ;  thrills  to  the  scientific  discoveries 
of  last  week  in  chemistry  or  aerial  naviga- 
tion. He  reads  no  books  older  than  Kip- 
ling, d'Annunzio,  Beaudelaire,  or  Maeter- 
linck ;  and  above  all,  he  never  quotes !  If 
he  does,  it  is  good  form  to  do  so  only  in 
some  such  wise  as  this:  "Seems  to  me  that 
French  chap  —  what's  his  name? — has 
got  off  some  sing-song  stuff  about  that. 
Can't  for  the  life  of  me  think  of  the  fellow's 
words.  It 's  bully  good  stuff,just  the  same." 
And  grandfather  rises  and  leaves  the 
room,  rigid  with  outraged  taste,  unspeak- 
ably repelled  by  such  latter-day  blasphemy. 
He  and  his  grandson  are  as  far  apart  as  if 
one  were  born  in  London  and  the  other  in 
Timbuctoo;  and  the  pathos  lies  in  the  fact 
that  each  would  claim  —  London! 
168 


BEHIND  THE   TIMES 

And  the  grandson  slams  out  of  the 
house;  the  old  primal  jealousy  of  his  own 
day  and  generation  gnawing  at  his  heart,  as 
it  has  done  since  men  began  to  think  and 
argue  and  improve  on  the  first  arrowhead. 
"  Father  is  bad  enough,  in  all  conscience, 
with  his  Ristori,  Patti,  c  Semiramide,' 
'Pickwick,'  Shenandoah  and  Shiloh  refer- 
ences ;  but  when  it  comes  to  poor  old  grand- 
father and  cThe  Arts/  —  whatever  they 
may  be,  —  there  is  nothing  but  speed,  speed 
alone,  that  will  clear  a  man's  brain  ! " 

The  whole  question  of  the  arts  is  dead 
long  ago,  save  alone  architecture,  which  is 
only  carpentry  carried  to  its  nth  power! 
The  Arts,  indeed  !  To  be  sure  there 's 
Shaw  with  his  topsy-turvyisms,  and  Pinero 
with  his  mechanisms,  and  Puccini  with  his 
syrupy  lollipops ;  but  thank  the  Powers ! 
he  himself  has  never  seen  Shakespeare, 
never  read  Dickens,  and  would  rather  die 
than  sit  through  "The  Ring"! 

As  for  politics,  of  course  he  and  his 
friends  had  long  ago  faced  the  fact  that  the 
169 


BEHIND   THE   TIMES 

tendency  of  our  Republic  is  toward  central- 
ization of  power.  The  faintest  whisper  of 
a  third  term  in  Grant's  day  caused  much 
more  stir  all  over  the  land  than  the  open 
and  full  discussion  of  it  to-day.  It  repre- 
sents only  the  newest  political  thought,  no 
longer  a  national  cataclysm.  The  young 
men  have  already  assimilated  the  many 
possibilities  therein  embraced,  and  look 
with  eager  eyes  and  courageous  hearts  to- 
ward our  future  and  the  impending  changes, 
which  are  as  sure  as  breathing.  So  ponders 
the  grandson  on  the  way  to  his  garage. 

In  religion  the  rapid  changes  are  ap- 
parent to  all.  Not  alone  in  the  spirit  but  in 
the  manifestation.  The  sectarian  rocks  of 
grandfather's  day,  upon  which  men  so 
sorely  cut  themselves,  have  been  slowly 
pulverized  during  the  two  generations 
which  have  followed  his ;  and  soon  will  be 
but  part  of  the  good  arable  earth,  in  which 
will  grow  many  things  for  the  good  of 
humanity.  The  rabbi,  the  Catholic  priest, 
the  Presbyterian  dominie,  the  Salvation 
170 


BEHIND   THE   TIMES 

Army  leader,  will  sit  together  in  unity  of 
spirit,  andend  their  prayer, — "for  Human- 
ity's sake.  Amen/' 

A  Presbyterian  minister  recently  solem- 
nized the  rites  of  matrimony  dressed  in  a 
black  silk  gown,  amd  read  the  service 
from  the  Prayer  Book  of  the  Established 
Church  of  England.  Conceive  of  the  long 
string  of  vituperative  adjectives  that  would 
have  been  aimed  at  him  by  the  Selectmen 
of  1670!  And  the  mighty  fines  imposed, 
the  penalties,  punishments,  and  restric- 
tions—  perhaps  banishment  itself! 

As  those  peevish  days  are  now  behind 
the  times,  so  shall  to-day  soon  be.  With- 
out revolution,  without  legislation  even,  — 
just  the  inevitable  imperceptible  renewal 
and  change  of  elements  in  our  bodies  which 
takes  place  every  seven  years,  as  long  as  the 
pulse  of  living  throbs  on ;  so  it  is  with  the 
generations  as  they  file  by. 

Not  many  years  ago,  in  Rome,  a  mon- 
seigneur  of  the  Catholic  Church,  —  having 
a  supposed  reason  to  think  that  a  bit  of 


BEHIND   THE   TIMES 

proselytism  might  not  come  amiss, — in 
reply  to  some  such  smiling  protest  as  this  : 
"  If,  Monseigneur,  nothing  else  kept  me 
out  of  your  church,  the  Index  Expurgaforius 
would.  To  be  forty  years  old  and  told 
what  I  may  or  may  not  read ! "  said  to  the 
writer :  — 

"Ah,  my  dear  madame,  it  is  fortunate 
that  we  have  accustomed  ourselves  to  be 
misunderstood!  Thestrengthofthe  Church 
lies  in  its  very  flexibility  and  adaptability. 
We  should  never  dream  of  dictating  to  you, 
however  much  we  deem  it  wise  to  do  so  to 

Madame  W .  She  is  but  a  child.  She 

will  always  remain  one.  She  will  never  learn 
to  walk  quite  alone.  She  needs  us." 

"  Did  the  strength  of  your  church  lie  in 
its  very  adaptability  in  the  time  of  Alex- 
ander Borgia  ? "  came  to  the  lips,  but  was 
stopped  there.  It  was  impossible,  in  face 
of  that  flattering  accent,  that  perfect  cour- 
tesy. They  could  be  properly  met  only  by 
a  deprecating  little  smile  —  of  triumph  ! 
He  had  admitted  exactly  what  was  wanted. 
172 


BEHIND   THE   TIMES 

Even  in  the  most  conservative  institution 
in  the  world  to-day,  there  was  that  same 
note  of  progress,  and  of  unescapable 
change,  if  it  too  would  not  fall  hopelessly 
"  behind  the  times."  But  there  are  few  signs 
of  that  yet ;  the  Church  of  Rome  has  al- 
ways been  governed  by  superior  minds 
who  see  very  far  ahead,  if  purposely  wear- 
ing the  blinders  of  tradition  wherewith  to 
limit  their  width  of  vision. 

The  skirmish-fighting  has  begun  in  Eng- 
land between  the  State  and  the  Established 
Church.  The  drawn  battle  is  inevitably 
ahead.  Our  grandsons  will  be  living  when 
peace  is  declared,  and  the  ground  cleared 
for  the  new  thoughts  and  the  new  nomen- 
clature of  a  few  old  thoughts. 

Not  very  many  issues  come  to  actual 
drawn  battle,  however.  The  smaller  social 
and  political  questions  left  to  a  new  gener- 
ation by  a  former,  are  generally  soon  dis- 
posed of,  or  die  out  of  themselves  through 
neglect,  in  face  of  the  host  of  larger  issues 
crowding  forward. 

173 


BEHIND   THE   TIMES 

One  generation  considers  lightning  a  di- 
rect chastening  from  the  hand  of  a  book- 
keeping Being  of  their  imaginations,  whose 
time  is  largely  spent  in  fitting  his  punish- 
ments to  our  crimes.  A  later  generation 
catches  the  terrible  thing  called  lightning, 
tames  it  to  human  needs,  and  harnesses  it 
to  sundry  human  mechanisms  built  for 
power  and  speed. 

That  the  next  generation  will  do  many 
more  miracles  with  electricity  is  inevitable, 
—  even  besides  cooking,  washing,  and  iron- 
ing, which  are  already  on  trial.  For  we  to- 
day generate  it  as  deliberately  as  the  old 
folks  made  soft-soap ;  and  we  are  far  from 
daring  to  place  any  limit  to  its  utilitarian 
power. 

The  criticism  of  one  generation  by  the 
two  nearest  is  beneficial  in  the  long  run. 
From  morals  to  manners,  it  makes  for  a 
safe  brake  on  the  one  hand,  and  a  whip  on 
the  other  hand !  The  resultant  speed  is 
good,  healthy  and  moderate. 

Although  an  honest  man  or  woman  is 
174 


BEHIND   THE   TIMES 

the  same,  world  without  end,  the  manners 
of  one  generation  differ  so  from  those  of 
the  one  before,  and  of  the  one  following 
after,  that  much  misconception  prevails. 

Would  our  American  grandmothers 
have  applied  the  word  "  lady  "  —  sacred  in 
those  days  —  to  a  fashionable  young  ma- 
tron of  to-day,  with  her  youthful  attire,  her 
"  assisted  "  complexion,  her  slang,  her  cock- 
tails and  cigarettes  ?  What  would  grand- 
mamma have  to  say — what  wouldn't  she? 
—  at  women  riding  astride,  and  playing 
bridge  for  money  during  half  their  waking 
hours,  and  their  absolute  independence  of 
any  power  in  heaven  or  on  earth?  Their 
studied  repression  of  sentiment,  even  for 
their  children,  who  are  brought  up  on  the 
New  Thought  theory,  and  have  trained 
nurses  who  must  be  consulted  before  the 
dear  soft  little  faces  can  be  kissed  or  ca- 
ressed. 

However  a  man  or  a  woman  may  struggle 
not  to  be  left  behind  in  the  onward  rush  of 
the  new  generation,  however  they  may  so 
'75 


BEHIND   THE   TIMES 

force  the  note  of  gayety,  and  nimbleness  of 
foot,  however  the  woman  may  dye,  and 
rouge,  and  wear  collars  broad  to  strangula- 
tion, or  the  man  pad,  and  affect  a  rakish 
eye  and  anachronistic  necktie — the  world 
recognizes  at  a  glance  the  last  flare-up  of  a 
lamp  when  the  oil  is  running  low.  And 
after  a  momentary  admiration  for  so  clever 
a  tour  de  force,  the  struggle  wins  naught 
but  smiling  contempt. 

A  hundred  things  point  to  so  thin  a 
disguise.  The  best  made-up  and  posed  old 
fop  on  earth  removes  his  hat  instinctively, 
even  in  a  public  elevator,  if  a  woman  is  in 
it,  thereby  placing  him  at  once  in  his  own 
generation.  The  most  wondrously  con- 
structed grande  dame,  still  in  the  running 
with  the  friskiest  society  matron,  rises,  in- 
stinctively, to  greet  another  woman  frankly 
no  younger  than  she;  and  the  world  knows 
at  once  that  she  is  hopelessly  behind  the 
times.  They  did  those  things  in  grand- 
mother's day.  Only  the  young  girls  dip 
I  their  little  curtseys  to  their  female  elders 


BEHIND    THE   TIMES 

nowadays  —  all  else  is  "  bad  form  "  and  be- 
hind the  times. 

But  there  is  a  very  actual  charm  to  mid- 
dle age  if  all  sense  of  being  left  behind  is 
avoided  by  simply  drifting  on  in  the  cur- 
rent of  one's  own  generation,  with  its  own 
manners,  thoughts,  clothes,  and  prejudices. 
Waist  measure — and  waist-coat  alike  — 
let  go !  Shoes  and  gloves  comfortable  at 
last,  after  years  of  tiresome  compromise. 
The  necessity  of  strenuous  exercise  palli- 
ated; the  joy  of  sitting  down  openly  con- 
fessed, albeit  the  joy  of  lying  down  be 
considered  still  very  far  ahead.  Young  peo- 
ple are  once  more  attentive  and  courteous 
to  one's  gray  hairs.  Seats  are  offered  in 
public  places  by  well-bred  men  and  maid- 
ens alike.  The  soreness  of  the  fight  with 
Time — always  ending  the  same  way  — 
has  passed  off;  the  sadness  of  old  age  has 
not  yet  come. 

It  is  the  age  of  listening  —  the  only  one 
of  the  three.  It  is  the  time  when  one  listens 
to  the  love  stories  of  the  young,  —  and 
177 


BEHIND   THE   TIMES 

perhaps  claims  the  right  to  scold  a  little, — 
as  detached  from  it  all  as  was  the  Sphinx 
herself  lending  a  stony  ear  to  men's  dis- 
torted tales. 

It  is  the  short  sunset-hour  of  life;  and 
if  one's  vision  be  clear,  it  is  the  most 
beautiful  part  of  the  brief  day  of  living. 
There  comes  a  broad  charity  that  has  in  it 
something  of  the  divine  spirit,  that  sees  the 
errors  of  humanity,  and  yet  everywhere 
cause  for  tenderness.  Sees  everywhere,  not 
the  things  that  men  have  done,  but  "the 
things  that  men  would  do."  It  contains 
admiration  for  a  life  well  expended,  and 
contains  charity  for  a  life  ill  expended,  or 
unexpended  —  even  if  it  be  one's  own. 

And  then,  after  a  little,  comes  old  age. 
Another  age  of  talking,  querulous  of  too 
much  listening.  And,  too,  a  pathetic  little 
new  growth  of  vanity ;  and  a  vision  short- 
ened to  the  details  of  immediate  environ- 
ment. There  are  certain  little  equations 
between  yesterday's  humidity  and  one's 
rheumatism ;  or  between  to-day's  dessert 
178 


BEHIND   THE   TIMES 

and  one's  gout.  Once  more  the  love  of  life 
is  curiously  intensified,  desperately  clung 
to.  The  night  is  coming  rapidly,  but  the 
old,  however  weary  and  heavily  laden,  fight 
against  the  hour  for  rest  and  sleep  as  do  the 
little  children,  already  cross  for  need  of  it, 
after  the  long  day.  This  of  the  many ;  but 
of  the  few  whose  intellect  lifts  them  above 
the  touch  of  Time,  there  remains  the  beauty 
of  the  late  autumn.  The  wonderful  skele- 
ton of  trees  is  laid  bare,  no  longer  smoth- 
ered in  nature's  millinery.  For  the  bones 
of  things  have  ever  a  beauty  of  their  own  — 
perhaps  because  in  greater  measure  reveal- 
ing Nature's  marvelous  plan  and  handicraft. 
The  peace,  instead  of  the  peevishness, 
of  a  clear  unprejudiced  intellect  at  the  end 
of  life  is  the  only  glimpse  into  heaven 
vouchsafed  us.  It  has  not  come  through 
mere  abstemious  living,  for  a  sowing  of 
negatives  never  yet  produced  much  of  a 
crop  —  religious  teaching  to  the  contrary, 
notwithstanding.  Intellect  is  a  gift,  as  is 
a  great  singing  voice. 
179 


BEHIND   THE   TIMES 

And  so  the  grandfather  may  be  the 
happiest  of  the  three  generations.  Albeit 
his  grandson  may  be  listed  among  those 
"athletic  brutes*'  (heroes  of  the  day)  down 
the  hill  in  the  college  stadium ;  and  his 
son  be  among  the  shouters  on  the  grand 
stand.  And  he,  the  old  man  in  his  pil- 
lowed chair,  is  seated  by  an  open  window, 
watching  while  the  lights  are  being  put 
out  one  by  one  on  the  high  altar  of 
the  West,  after  Vespers  and  Benediction, 
and  before  the  old  sacristan  Death  comes 
to  lock  up. 

What  matter  now  the  old  disputes  with 
his  son,  and  his  son's  son,  about  religion, 
science,  art,  literature,  music?  It  is  all  but 
as  the  buzzing  of  bees,  each  full  of  his 
small  task  of  filling  his  tiny  waxen  cell, 
down  in  the  hot  meadow-lands. 

There  is  but  one  thing  which  keeps  ever 
ahead  of  Time  ;  which  survives  the  revela- 
tions of  Science ;  which  was  written  across 
the  sky  of  Yesterday,  and  is  across  the  sky 
of  To-day,  and  will  be  found  there  "when 
180 


BEHIND   THE  TIMES 

the  curtain  of  To-morrow  rolls  up" ;  and 
that  is  "the  moral  sentiment."  For,  as 
Emerson  says, "  That  was  older  and  awaited 
expectant  these  larger  insights." 


A   FEW   FALLACIES    IN   OUR 
EDUCATION 


A    FEW     FALLACIES     IN     OUR 
EDUCATION 

"  That  the  age  writes  so  much  on  education  shows 
at  once  its  absence  and  the  feeling  of  its  import- 
ance. Only  lost  things  are  cried  about  the  streets." 
—  RICHTER. 


AMONG  an  American's  many  and  sustain- 
ing self-satisfactions,  our  system  of  educa- 
tion is  easily  the  most  conspicuous. 

Any  word  spoken  in  aught  save  lauda- 
tion is,  of  necessity,  but  "the  breeze  of  the 
fan  pitted  against  the  hurricane." 

There  would  be  much  less  to  criticise  in 
our  school  system  if  life  were,  in  fact,  what 
it  is  in  the  morbid  (that  is,  not  "sound  and 
healthful ")  fancy  of  so  many  educational 
authorities.  But  life  is  not  the  refined  pan- 
tomime the  doctrinaire  would  have  us  think, 
played  by  a  lot  of  bloodless,  sexless,  stom- 


A   FEW   FALLACIES 

achless  spirits,  who  live  on  shredded  phi- 
losophy and  predigested  poetry  ! 

Instead,  life  is  made  up  of  a  terrific  strug- 
gle for  bread  and  meat  ;  made  up  as  a  forest 
is,  of  unending  battles  for  space  and  air  and 
ever  the  push  and  scramble  upwards  to- 
wards the  sunlight  which  is  always  there, 
above  and  about  us  —  waiting ;  made  up  of 
experiments,  disasters,  blunders,  explora- 
tions, big  defeats,  small  successes;  made 
up  of  knocking  our  heads  against  Nature's 
hard  and  fast  laws,  and  so  learning  them  — 
exactly  as  a  child  learns  what  meaneth  the 
words  "  cold"  and  "  hot  "  ;  and  there  is  no 
other  way  to  teach  him,  nor  us. 

Amidst  all  the  uproar  and  clash  of  ele- 
ments in  the  storm  of  daily  living  the  one 
life-line  to  which  we  must  cling  or  be  lost 
is  strength  of  character, — a  strong  rope  of 
many  twisted  strands  that  is  slow  in  the 
making. 

What  percentage  of  our  education  is  de- 
voted to  the  development  of  character? 
That  question  seems  to  the  writer  the  fore- 
186 


A   FEW   FALLACIES 

most  in  any  practical,  sane  discussion  of 
this  question. 

We  spend  about  $ 200,000,000  a  year  on 
public  education,  and  character-develop- 
ment remains  almost  untouched,  save  in 
the  most  superficial  way.  To  be  sure,  it  is 
something  to  train  a  little  street  savage  to 
plaster  down  his  ruffled  locks,  give  a  wa- 
tery dab  at  his  hands  and  face,  and  say  the 
inevitable, "  Yes,  ma'am,"  that  is  considered 
the  corner-stone  of  social  civilization  in  this 
country.  One  welcomes  gladly  any  and  all 
such  reformations,  however  insignificant, 
and  one  teacher  for  sixty  small  savages  can 
do  little  more.  It  is  what  is  not  done,  that 
forms  the  glaring  fault  of  our  system. 

A  good  definition  of"  character  "  is  "  im- 
pulse reined  down  into  steady  continuance." 
That  a  fine  character  must  come,  can  only 
come,  from  a  fine  motive,  has  also  been 
well  said. 

Whether  it  be  that  a  given  temperament 
leads  to  pedagogism,  or  that  the  life  of 
teaching   develops    a   given    unavoidable 
187 


A  FEW   FALLACIES 

mental  bias,  certain  it  is  that  to  an  alarming 
degree  education  is  left  (particularly  with 
our  girls)  in  the  hands  of  purists,  to  whom 
deep  insight  into  life  itself —  not  theoreti- 
cal, not  book  life  —  is  denied,  and  a  certain 
crystalline  sanity. 

Boys  and  girls  alike  are  taught  that 
"education"  (the  cramming  of  a  lot  of  un- 
related knowledge)  is  an  end  in  itself,  in- 
stead of  being  but  one  of  several  means  to- 
wards the  development  of  useful  living, — 
and  that,  and  that  alone,  spells  what  all  the 
world  most  longs  for  —  happiness. 

The  development  of  character  —  which 
Smiles  shrewdly  says  "is  property" —  is  a 
much  stronger  lever  towards  that  end  than 
mere  education,  in  its  narrower  sense.  It 
is  property  too  that  grows  in  value  as  the 
years  pass.  It  is  not  merely  a  personal  as- 
set, but  an  asset  to  the  community  at  large. 

Take,  as  we    do  in    this  country,  the 

daughter  of  a  washwoman,  used  to  the 

moral  and  physical  chaos  of  five  in  two 

rooms,  and  stuff  her  with  all  the  "  educa- 

188 


A   FEW   FALLACIES 

tion  "  in  the  cosmos,  and  it  is  safe  to  say 
that  next  to  nothing  of  it  all  will  bring  any 
order  out  of  that  home  chaos.  Neither  the 
analysis  of  Shakespeare's  plays,  nor  geome- 
try, nor  dabblings  in  chemistry, — unrelated 
to  the  kitchen  stove, —  nor  astronomy  (for 
she  gets  no  nearer  the  stars  than  the  roof 
where  the  wash  dances  its  endless  fandango), 
will  do  any  more  than  take  that  daughter 
out  of  those  two  awful  rooms,  leaving  chaos 
behind  her.  That  is  the  utmost,  and  it 
helps  a  little,  to  be  sure,  but  in  face  of  that 
enormous  expenditure,  not  to  the  extent 
that  it  should  and  could  be  made  to  do  — 
but  for  the  theorists ! 

At  the  same  time  it  develops  and  in- 
dorses selfishness  in  her,  and  a  snobbish- 
ness as  to  her  forbears,  affectation  as  to  her 
small  learning.  It  helps  neither  her  family 
nor  the  commonwealth  as  it  might.  Be- 
cause first,  her  character  remains  largely  un- 
touched, and  even  the  impulse  to  work  and 
help  them  is  not  developed  in  her,  which 
is  the  greatest  error  of  all  in  the  system ; 
189 


A   FEW   FALLACIES 

and  second,  because  what  she  has  been 
taught  is  unrelated  to  the  exigencies  of  her 
daily  life,  and  of  little  use  to  any  one  con- 
nected with  it. 

Take  another  example  from  a  different 
social  plane:  Is  there  nothing  wrong  when 
our  girl  college  graduate  returns  home, 
brimming  with  "  education,"  only  about 
one-tenth  of  which  she  ever  makes  the 
least  use  of  (and  nowadays  with  the  hand- 
writing of  an  uneducated  mechanic,  so  that 
one's  old-fashioned  sensibilities  shrink  be- 
fore it)  ?  She  leaves  her  denatured  life  at 
college  with  its  fundamentally  false  values 
of  reality,  and  returns  —  entirely  helpless 
—  to  face  the  true  value  of  life's  realities. 
Like  the  washwoman's  daughter,  to  make 
any  use  of  her  acquired  knowledge,  she 
must  leave  her  home  and  shirk  her  most 
obvious  immediate  home  duties. 

There  is  something  wrong  about  those 
four  self-centred,  raffine  years  spent  with 
a  score  of  book-learned  spinsters  who  gen- 
erally consider  the  education  they  impart 
190 


A    FEW    FALLACIES 

as  an  end  ;  who  all  alike  look  at  life  through 
their  fingers  —  that  fifty-odd  years  of  actual 
living  ahead  of  their  pupils,  after  those  pal- 
try four  have  passed  and  been  forgotten. 

Is  there  nothing  wrong  with  the  system 
when  this  college  graduate  returns  to  her 
home,  and  finds  her  father  white,  silent,  and 
grim  with  overwork,  and  nothing  of  all  her 
mathematical  studies,  her  logic,  her  fund 
of  "  higher"  education,  can  lift  one  penny- 
weight of  work  from  his  drooping  shoul- 
ders? She  finds  her  mother  overburdened 
with  household  or  social  cares,  and  aging 
before  her  time,  and  nothing  in  that  utterly 
false  college  atmosphere  has  equipped  the 
daughter  in  any  one  particular  (save  that  of 
hasty  bed-making)  to  turn  to  and  help,  and 
so  bring  back  the  smile  to  the  dear  worn 
face.  Her  sister  is  ill ;  has  any  of  her  expen- 
sive training  fitted  that  graduate  to  save  the 
heavy  expense  of  a  trained  nurse  ? 

And  this  we  call  "  higher  "  education  ! 
Is  n't  it  perhaps  one  or  two  stories  "  higher  " 
than  the  plane  of  sanity  ?  Certainly  it  is 
191 


A   FEW   FALLACIES 

above  what  Stedman  calls  "  the  intestinal 
thick  of  life." 

The  young  woman's  learning  has  been 
almost  purely  academic  and  receptive,  as  a 
woman's  generally  is.  It  is  again  entirely 
unrelated,  in  almost  every  particular,  to  any 
condition  of  actual  life,  save  that  of  a  capa- 
city for  passing  on  her  faulty  knowledge  to 
others  —  penmanship  and  all! 

And  that  means  once  again,  as  in  the  case 
of  the  working-class  girl,  going  out  of  the  borne 
a  free  woman,  and  leaving  it  unsuccored, 
unrelieved  of  one  single  burden.  For  when 
a  girl  supports  herself  away  from  her  home, 
it  is  well  known  that  that  is  generally  all 
that  she  does,  all  that  has  come  to  be  ex- 
pected of  her.  Above  all  it  develops  more 
and  more  in  our  women  the  national  curse 
of  feminine  individualism ;  and  slowly  atro- 
phies the  much  needed  feminine  instinct  of 
communism,  which  alone  can  save  us  so- 
cially. 

Our  boy  graduate  is  decorated  with  a 
scientific  degree,  and  yet  we  are  compelled 
192 


A    FEW    FALLACIES 

to  send  a  glass  of  water  to  the  nearest  chem- 
ist to  be  analyzed,  for  the  protection  of  the 
household.  He  has  spent  ayear  or  so  study- 
ing electricity,  and  do  we  not  send  for  an 
electrician  when  the  connection  between  an 
electric  lamp  and  the  feed  wire  is  burned  out  ? 
So,  many  a  study  in  that  showy  college 
curriculum,  which  so  took  our  fancy,  will 
crumble  in  the  same  way  before  the  test  of 
ordinary every-day  practical  life.  Why,then, 
go  to  the  expense  of  it  ?  Why  do  we  not 
make  that  practical  test  the  one  genuinely 
solid  basis  upon  which  to  build  up  our  chil- 
dren's education  ?  We  are  not  dealing  in 
this  young  country  of  ours  with  a  duke's 
sons  and  daughters  who  are  in  a  position 
to  play  with  pretty  little  educational  and 
socialistic  theories  if  they  choose.  We  have 
to  do  with  something  like  60,000,000  of 
people  grappling  with  the  question  of  food 
and  shelter;  grappling  also  with  not  only 
our  own  ignorance,  but  that  of  about  720,— 
874  immigrants  a  year,  for  the  past  ten 
years,  from  Europe  and  Asia. 


A   FEW    FALLACIES 

That,  under  our  present  educational  sys- 
tem, we  reached  some  time  ago  the  point 
of  non-assimilation  of  that  vast  horde,  is 
obvious  to  even  the  most  optimistic.  Our 
present  public-school  system  is  largely  re- 
sponsible for  this  growing  indigestion. 

If,  in  place  of  that  academic  and  preten- 
tious system,  one  half  of  that  $200,000,000 
was  spent  in  the  mere  duplications  of  the 
various  forms  of  "social  service"  already 
started,  the  outlook  would  be  less  gloomy, 
leaving  the  higher  and  special  education  to 
those  who  really  want  it. 

More  and  more  industrial  schools; 
classes  in  manual  work  of  every  description ; 
more  night  schools  (for  those  pupils  are  al- 
ways in  earnest) ;  leagues  for  political  edu- 
cation ;  more  "  settlements  "  established ; 
more  working  girls'  societies ;  travelers*  aid 
work;  more  recreation  piers,  and  school 
gardens,  and  playgrounds,  and  parks  and 
Sunday  afternoon  music  for  the  poor  in  our 
great  cities,  and  cut  out  the  "Analysis  of 
Shakespeare's  Plays"!  Then  perhaps  the 
194 


A   FEW   FALLACIES 

gods  will  see  that  sanity  has  at  last  come  to 
our  republic,  and  they  will  fight  with  us. 
Yale  has  at  last  given  twenty-seven  electives 
in  commercial  methods  in  the  graduate 
school,  —  a  most  encouraging  sign. 

To  this  list  let  us  add  some  form  of  the 
Pestalozzi-Frobel  movement,  similar  to 
that  of  "  Sesame  House,"  London.  It  is 
simply  the  Kindergarten  developed  into  the 
"  home"  school,  which  Frobel  hoped  to  see 
some  day  part  of  every  girl's  "higher"  edu- 
cation, whether  she  had  to  support  herself 
as  a  nurse,  or  whether  the  training  was  to 
be  applied  to  her  own  children.  In  either 
case  the  nation  is  the  gainer.  We  are  much 
behind  both  Germany  and  England  in  the 
adoption  of  this  phase  of  advanced  Kinder- 
garten. Many  people  even  think  that  Fro- 
bel's  work  stopped  with  the  children ;  in- 
stead of  which  he  really  began  with  the 
adults,  and  only  later  on  saw  the  necessity 
of  beginning  with  the  children,  in  his  splen- 
did work  of  "  eliminating  the  haphazard 
from  education." 

195 


II 


RELIGION  is  beginning  to  fumble  with  its 
cuff-links  preparatory  to  rolling  up  its  shirt- 
sleeves, doffing  its  mediaeval  vestments,  and 
getting  down  among  the  people  at  last,  and 
becoming  the  living  factor  in  human  life ; 
that  is,  after  all,  the  real  test  of  any  thing's 
right  to  exist,  even  the  right  of  a  religion. 

Education  must  do  the  same.  Already 
men  and  women  have  seen  what  must  come, 
if  our  republic  is  to  succeed  ;  and  they  have 
begun  to  act  upon  that  insight.  But  there 
is  hard  fighting  to  be  done,  before  the  peda- 
gogues and  theorists  are  finally  downed. 

There  have  also  been  times  when  the 
wresting  from  home  churches  certain  funds 
destined  for  foreign  missions  has  highly  re- 
commended itself.  But  time  will  inevitably 
solve  that,  as  our  national  complacence  re- 
cedes. After  all,  it  is  only  a  question  of 
back-yards ;  whether  it  is  our  highest  duty 
to  keep  our  own  clean  or  that  of  our  next- 
door  neighbor. 

196 


A   FEW   FALLACIES 

As  an  example  of  the  way  education  has 
fallen  into  conventions  we  have  but  to  study 
the  slow  petrifaction  through  many  genera- 
tions of  the  Tree  of  Knowledge  in  certain 
classic  places  in  England,  where  William 
Paley's  "  View  of  the  Evidences  of  Chris- 
tianity "  has  held  its  place  in  the  curriculum 
of  Cambridge  University  all  through  the 
life-work  of  such  mental  giants  as  Darwin, 
Spencer,  Huxley,  and  Tyndall.  Only 
three  years  ago  it  would  have  been  a  sac- 
rilege even  to  suggest  the  dropping  of  that 
archaic  archdeacon's  writings  from  the 
Cambridge  Examinations. 

Within  less  time  than  that,  Oxford  has 
been  awakened  by  an  outside  force,  to  the 
necessity  for  more  original,  productive  work 
and  less  passive  receptive  work, —  Oxford 
(the  mother  of  modern  educational  conven- 
tion), which  some  five  years  ago  gave  the 
writer  a  far  greater  sense  of  the  flight  of 
time  than  ever  did  the  Temple  of  Paestum ! 
So  signs  of  disintegration,  even  in  that 
educational  Gibraltar,  are  not  wanting, 
197 


A   FEW    FALLACIES 

and  disintegrated  rock  is  not  a  bad  fer- 
tilizer. 

Our  colleges  have,  to  be  sure,  long  ago 
dispensed  with  Paley,  but  there  remain  nu- 
merous other  excisions  that  the  slow  knife 
of  Time  alone  can  successfully  make  for  us. 

The  old  claim  that  all  this  preliminary 
education  is  necessary  to  develop  the  men- 
tal muscles  of  our  young  people  does  not 
stand  the  briefest  analysis.  Is  it  any  more 
"  developing  "  to  make  cake  than  to  make 
bread  ?  The  old  ideas  about  the  necessity 
for  the  most  extraordinary  mental  gymnas- 
tics, "  memory-aids,  etc."  (practiced  in 
England  well  within  our  time),  are  passing 
rapidly  away.  As  preeminently  sane  a  peda- 
gogue as  Gordy  even  openly  questions  the 
usefulness  of  the  excessive  stress  laid  on 
higher  mathematics  in  the  United  States,  to 
"  strengthen  "  the  growing  mind. 

It  is  no  longer  the  sacred  ivory  ring  upon 

which  our  nation  does  its  mental  teething. 

That  idea  did  very  well  in  the  days  when 

electricity  meant  little  more  than  a  thunder- 

198 


A   FEW   FALLACIES 

storm  ;  when  "  a  course  "  in  chemistry  in 
many  a  school  was  easily  accomplished  in 
"six  weeks  "  ;  when  Africa  was  a  large  yel- 
low blank  on  our  maps,  beloved  by  the  sloth- 
ful scholar  beyond  all  other  countries  on  the 
globe. 

Saadi  says :  "  Whosoever  acquires  know- 
ledge and  does  not  practice  it,  resembleth 
him  who  ploughed,  but  did  not  sow." 

At  the  present  day  one  of  the  most  im- 
portant questions  before  us  is  how  to  reduce 
the  ever  lengthening  chain  of  education 
dragged  along  by  our  feverish  over-bur- 
dened school-children,  galley-slaves  to  a 
Theory  !  The  recent  enormous  strides  in 
chemistry,  electricity,  physics,  in  fact  all 
forms  of  any  useful  knowledge,  must  be 
made  room  for  by  eliminating  a  lot  of  use- 
less information  hitherto  thought  necessity 
to  the  "  strengthening  "  of  young  minds. 

Nature  is  cc  loving  "  only  to  the  poets, 
whose  sole  outlook  is  through  skylights  at 
the  tree-tops  and  the  stars.  To  those  of  us 
who  walk  soberly  along  the  ground  with 
199 


\\ 


A    FEW    FALLACIES 

eyes  on  the  level  of  the  endless  warfare  of 
the  streets,  Nature  is  known  forever  to 
bring  life  into  the  world,  and  forever  to  slay 
it;  known  to  fight  man,  to  lay  traps  for 
him,  to  laugh  at  him,  to  hide  her  most  use- 
ful secrets  from  him. 

Merely  to  outwit  Nature,  to  master  the 
well-kept  secret  of  her  germs,  and  the  better 
kept  secret  of  her  toxins,  abundant  educa- 
tion is  necessary,  logically  related  to  human 
needs,  which  may  be  trusted  to  replace  the 
unrelated  knowledge  crammed  into  our 
protesting  young  people. 

A  noted  historian  and  pedagogue  has 
recently  written  :  "  The  education  that 
neglects  to  emphasize  frugality,  persever- 
ance, honesty,  reliability,  consideration, 
uprightness,  for  the  sake  of  a  purely  intel- 
lectual training  because  of  the  supposed 
necessity  of  the  latter  to  the  earning  of  a 
livelihood,  is  a  cruel  mistake,  an  almost 
criminal  blunder."  The  only  exception  the 
present  writer  would  take  to  this  is  with  the 
word  "  almost." 

200 


Ill 

THE  open  and  confessed  ideas  upon  which 
our  whole  public-school  system  is  laid  are 
largely  fallacious.  First :  it  raises  the  level 
of  the  whole  people.  Second :  one  of  our 
most  cherished  Tartuffisms  is  that  the  all- 
too-easy  possession  of  papers  of  American 
citizenship  gives  a  man's  children  by  an 
"  inalienable  right"  (words  to  conjure  with 
amongst  us!)  a  smattering  of — algebra; 
whereas  that  privilege,  not  in  the  least  an 
"  inalienable  right,"  should  only  be  ac- 
corded to  a  public-school  pupil  who  has 
proved  that  higher  mathematics  is  an  im- 
pelling necessity  of  his  very  being,  and  then 
he  will  value  it  the  more  if  he  pays  a  small 
fee  for  it. 

But  people  are  beginning  to  see  clearly, 
here  and  there.  Professor  Peck  writes: 
"  There  is  probably  no  principle  so  funda- 
mentally untrue  as  this  [that  education  in 
itself  and  for  all  human  beings  is  a  good 
201 


A   FEW   FALLACIES 

and  thoroughly  desirable  possession],  and 
there  is  certainly  none  that  is  fraught  with 
so  much  social  and  -political  peril  for  the  fu- 
ture." The  italics  are  not  his. 

The  level  is  raised,  to  be  sure,  but  also 
the  level  of  national  snobbishness,  certainly 
a  very  curious  trait  —  considering  our  ori- 
gin —  this  strong  disrelish  for  manual  labor, 
found  alike  in  our  men  and  our  women ! 
Or  is  it  perhaps  because  of  our  origin  ? 

Our  men  dislike  and  scorn  agricultural 
work,  and  the  Eastern  farms  are  bleak  and 
bear  nothing  of  the  fruits  of  the  earth ;  and 
in  the  far  West  there  are  miles  of  fruit  rot- 
ting every  summer  for  lack  of  hands  to 
pluck  and  pack  it  for  transportation. 

The  young  women  refuse  outright  with 
scorn  housework  as  a  means  to  a  living. 
They  dislike  even  their  own,  in  their  own 
small  houses.  These  prejudices,  undoubt- 
edly bred  in  us  by  our  faulty  public-school 
system,  are  at  the  bottom  of  many  of  our 
gravest  social  and  civic  questions :  the  serv- 
ant question,  the  crowding  into  cities,  the 
202 


A   FEW   FALLACIES 

lack  of  courtesy  that  is  the  all-pervading  so- 
cial disease  in  American  civilization.  This, 
among  several  of  our  fundamental  Ameri- 
can fallacies,  —  the  "  good-as-you,"  among 
others,  —  is  bearing  the  fruit  that  both  do- 
mestic and  foreign  seers  predicted  of  us  long 
ago. 

"  Strange  that  after  all  the  centuries  since 
Plato  wrote  his  'Republic/  and  Aristotle 
his  c  Politics,'  the  world  should  still  need 
to  be  told  that  the  honorable  life  is  the  life 
of  labor." 

Our  whole  public  educational  system 
strains  away  from  manual  work,  and  so  de- 
bases it  in  the  eyes  of  the  whole  young  na- 
tion, which  crowds  into  huge  cities  waiting 
for  work  that  they  have  been  inferentially 
taught  is  alone  worthy  of  them,  and  their 
newly  discovered  Equality,  their  imposing 
educational  equipment.  How  much  better, 
saner,  to  "  equip  them  for  earning  a  living, 
as  well  as  dignify  their  labor,  and  make  it 
respectable  in  their  own  eyes." 

There  are  not  many  greater  follies  in  the 
203 


A   FEW   FALLACIES 

world  to-day  than  the  fallacy  that  forces  the 
confusion  of  a  mass  of  far  less  than  half- 
digested  matter  upon  a  million  of  mediocre 
children,  lest  out  of  that  million  a  Haw- 
thorne, a  Webster,  a  Marshall  be  lost  to 
the  nation. 

The  truth  being  that,  given  health  and  a 
few  rudiments  of  learning,  there  is  no  power 
on  earth  but  death  that  could  have  stopped 
any  one  of  those  men  from  achieving  his 
precise  destiny.  For  no  amount  of  educa- 
tion will  develop  a  specialized  talent.  That, 
no  one  can  impart  to  us  ;  it  is  as  evasive  as 
gas.  It  is  rooted  in  the  individual  soul.  No 
teacher  ever  seeded  in  any  man  a  talent,  or 
even  a  predilection. 

Nor  will  any  number  of  books  stuffed 
into  a  million  or  two  of  bewildered  children 
ever  produce  a  Joseph  Story,  a  Joseph  Le 
Conte,  or  a  John  Burroughs  —  to  keep  to 
our  American  samplars. 

We  Americans,  on  the  contrary,  have 
ever  beside  us  living  examples  of  the  truth 
of  the  reverse  of  this  :  presidents  of  enor- 
204 


A  FEW   FALLACIES 

mous  railway  systems  who  began  as  brake- 
men  ;  bankers  who  first  emptied  scrap-bas- 
kets ;  all  of  them  hammering  out  success 
with  their  own  strong  character  and  na- 
tive intelligence,  with  precious  little  time, 
from  the  beginning,  for  even  the  "three 
R's." 

In  fact,  the  strongest  individual  human 
forces  that  our  nation  has  so  far  known 
have,  with  a  few  conspicuous  exceptions, 
managed  rather  to  escape  from  the  demor- 
alization of  our  over-schooling  with  their 
pristine  strength  untapped. 

Is  it  claiming  too  much  to  suggest  that 
this  enforced  cramming  of  purely  receptive 
education  may  have  so  sapped  the  physical 
strength,  or  so  bent  the  natural  mental  bias, 
that  some  embryo  naturalist,  some  natural 
jurist,  or  financier,  or  statesman,  has  fallen 
by  the  way,  and  his  talent  been  lost  to  his 
generation  ? 

So  he  have  in  him  the  germ  of  greatness, 
a  man  will  cut  his  way  through  solid  granite 
to  achieve  his  object,  without  all  that  "edu- 
205 


A   FEW   FALLACIES 

cation  "  ;  as  love  for  an  idea,  as  well  as  for 
a  woman,  always  has  managed  to  do. 

The  really  earnest  pupil  who  is  forced 
to  pay  something  for  his  tuition  beyond  the 
mere  primary,  or,  at  most,  grammar  grade, 
if  he  have  any  special  talent  for  anything, 
will  always  find  the  necessary  fee  by  hook 
or  by  crook  —  otherwise  the  world  is  in  no 
great  need  of  his  talent. 

Two  examples  have  come  under  the 
writer's  personal  observation.  First,  a 
butcher's  boy,  stained  apron  and  all,  sat 
down  with  his  overflowing  meat-basket  be- 
side me  one  summer  morning,  in  an  open 
street-car.  N  o  sooner  was  the  basket  settled, 
than  out  he  whipped  a  tattered,  blood- 
stained book  and  plunged  into  it,  almost 
passionately.  A  sideways  glance  divulged 
—  a  Latin  grammar  !  Not  to  ask  a  few 
questions,  premised  by  an  apology  for 
wasting  his  precious  time,  was  an  impossi- 
bility. Being  sincerely  sympathetic,  he  re- 
plied readily :  — 

"  I  've  only  had  two  full  terms  at  the 
206 


A   FEW   FALLACIES 

night  school,  and  I  'm  trying  to  keep  up 
with  the  class.  Father  died  when  I  was  a 
little  chap,  and  I  had  to  go  to  work.  My 
boss  can't  afford  to  have  but  one  delivery 
wagon,  so  that 's  my  job  —  that  and  clean- 
ing up,  and  sawdusting  our  place.  It  costs 
a  lot  to  deliver  on  the  street-cars,  but  I  '11 
make  it  pay  some  day  !  No,  I  don't  know 
just  why  I  like  Latin,  ma'am,"  he  went  on 
in  reply  to  a  question.  "  P'raps  it 's  because 
I  'm  used  to  getting  down  to  the  bones,  you 
see,  and  I  read  somewhere  that  it 's  the 
bones  of  our  language.  A  feller  ought  to 
know  about  the  bones  of  things,  seems  to 
me."  The  young,  rosy,  rather  dirty  face 
full  of  enthusiasm,  intelligence,  and  smil- 
ing determination  has  lingered  all  these 
years.  One's  hand  went  instinctively  to  the 
pocket  to  help  out  that  pathetic  carfare ; 
but  it  was  withdrawn  with  a  silent  apology. 
To  weaken  by  one  fibre  that  fine,  dignified 
spirit  would  be  very  far  removed  from  true 
philanthropy,  however  pleasurable  to  one's 
self. 

207 


A   FEW   FALLACIES 

The  other  case  was  a  poor  boy  of  the 
people  living  in  the  country.  He  persist- 
ently "  played  hookey,"  but  was  always, 
significantly  enough,  alone.  He  spent  his 
stolen  time  on  the  shores  of  a  northern  lake 
digging  for  arrowheads.  He  was  looked 
upon  as  a  born  vagrant,  and  more  or  less 
of  a  simpleton,  but  one  day  he  found  a 
listener  beside  his  lake,  and  before  his  early 
death  he  was  one  of  the  leading  authori- 
ties upon  the  art,  customs,  and  religion  of 
the  Zuni  Indians,  and  he  did  some  inspired 
and  very  valuable  work,  and  died  full  of 
honors.  He  loved  his  subject  and  a  path 
was  found  leading  to  it,  through  an  incon- 
ceivably adverse  environment. 

Plato,  in  his  noted  philosophical  dream, 
made  it  the  duty  of  his  disciples  ("  whom 
he  endowed  with  a  very  convenient  clair- 
voyance") to  uplift  only  those  children  of 
the  lower  class  who  possessed  unusual  abili- 
ties, and  give  to  them,  and  to  them  only, 
"  the  education  of  the  aristocracy."  The 
modern  growth  of  individualism  has  placed 
208 


A   FEW   FALLACIES 

that  burden  upon  the  children  themselves  ; 
and  so  the  state  is  put  to  the  enormous 
and  unwise  expense  of  giving  the  education 
"  of  the  aristocracy  "  to  millions  of  Ameri- 
can children  in  the  hope  that  here  and  there 
the  "owners  of  possible  abilities"  may  be 
reached.  Whereas,  rich  or  poor,  he  may  be 
trusted  to  hack  his  way  to  success,  if  there 
is  aught  within  him  that  is  destined  to  be 
of  any  real  use  to  the  world. 

Professor  Gordy  says  :  "  Poverty  is  due 
to  moral,  rather  than  intellectual  causes.  .  .  . 
The  poorest  people  are  not  poor  because 
of  a  lack  of  knowledge  of  the  '  three  R's.' 
They  are  poor  because  they  are  lacking  in 
self-respect,  thrift,  perseverance,  and  relia- 
bility." One's  thoughts  fly  back  to  that 
brave  butcher-boy  !  A  long  stay  in  foreign 
lands  followed  so  closely  upon  that  incident, 
that  touch  was  lost,  but  one  feels  absolutely 
assured  that  if  he  lives  he  is  not  now  "  de- 
livering "  for  a  petty  butcher. 


209 


IV 

NOT  until  the  free-education  fever  in  this 
country  has  gone  down  to  normal  (as  it 
must  if  we  are  to  continue  to  exist  under 
present  political  conditions),  and  the  studies 
unrelated  to  practical,  honest,  healthy  living 
are  cut  out  of  our  public-school  curriculum, 
shall  we  begin  to  build  slowly  and  strongly 
from  the  ground  up.  All  study  beyond  that 
should  be  paid  for. 

The  present  unsound  system  is  respon- 
sible for  several  conditions,  political,  social, 
and  industrial. 

i.  It  has  bred  in  the  nation  discontent 
and  unrest,  in  which  lie  imbedded  the  seeds 
of  anarchy  and  revolution,  the  diagnostic 
symptom  being  that  no  number  of  conces- 
sions appeases  it. 

ii.  It  has  led  to  an  industrial  superficial- 
ity in  all  kinds  of  work,  professional  as  well 
as  manual.  Talk  to  the  first  intelligent 
middle-aged  foreign  born  and  bred  me- 

210 


A   FEW   FALLACIES 

chanic  who  crosses  your  path,  and  learn  of 
the  vast  difference  in  required  preparation 
for  work  between  our  country  and  the  in- 
dustrial European  countries.  Six  years'  ap- 
prenticeship is  required  in  England  before 
the  honorable  title  of"  carpenter  "  is  earned. 
Two  years  of  slap-dash  experiments  on 
the  long-suffering  public  generally  suffice 
with  us  —  and  up  goes  his  shingle! 

An  English  carpenter  said  to  the  writer 
not  long  ago,  in  response  to  much  question- 
ing :  cc  But  you  see,  m'm,  with  us  in  Eng- 
land it 's  the  soundness  of  the  work  w'ich 
counts ;  w'ile  over  'ere  it 's  the  'urry  w'ich 
counts,  m'm." 

And  is  n't  it  the  "  'urry  "  that  counts  in 
education  in  the  United  States,  in  our  de- 
sire to  turn  quickly  in  one  generation  the 
great  mass  of  inpouring  ignorant  immi- 
grants 'into  what  is  glibly  called  "  useful 
citizens  "  ? 

Whatever  can  be  done  in  that  line,  can 
be  accomplished  in  the  primary  and  gram- 
mar schools, —  a  balanced,  low-grade  edu- 

211 


A   FEW   FALLACIES 

cation  ;  a  few  subjects  taught  simply,  and 
easily  digestible,  and  the  monetary  balance 
spent  in  manual  schools  of  every  conceiv- 
able description,  that  the  men  and  women, 
native  or  foreign,  who  must  work  with  their 
hands,  or  starve  or  steal,  are  taught  to  do 
so  in  their  youth. 

In  the  meanwhile  the  incessant  educa- 
tional experiments  go  on.  The  advocates  of 
an  Elective  system,  the  advocates  of  Will 
in  Education,  the  disciples  of  Automatism, 
or  of  Parallelism  ;  the  arguments  in  favor 
of  Rousseau  and  Herbert  on  one  hand,  and 
of  Carpenter  and  Hinsdale  on  the  other,  go 
on  their  noisy  way,  until  pupils  and  parents 
are  alike  left  bewildered  and  groping  in 
growing  darkness. 

No  wonder  the  law  of  compulsion  must 
be  resorted  to,  to  force  the  acceptance  of  so 
illogical  an  education  upon  a  reluctant  pub- 
lic !  Would  there  be  any  need  of  such  a  law 
if  the  education  bore  directly  upon  the  vital 
needs  of  that  public  ? 

It  has  been  well  said:  "The  end  of 
212 


A   FEW    FALLACIES 

education  may  be  provisionally  stated  as 
preparation  for  rational  living."  Can  it  hon- 
estly be  claimed  that  more  than  a  third  of 
our  encumbered  grammar  and  high-school 
system  is  needed  to  help  in  achieving  that 
end? 

Give  free  only  the  educational  funda- 
mentals, and  exactly  the  same  to  all  boys 
and  girls  throughout  the  land.  Selective 
work  should  be  left  to  the  manual  school 
(or  the  professional  and  scientific  schools 
if  there  be  enough  force  in  the  pupil  to 
carry  him  thus  far),  for  a  child's  judgment 
as  to  selective  educational  work  is  worth 
no  more  than  his  parents' —  both  are  equally 
fallacious.  Nine  youngsters  out  of  ten  in- 
tend to  run  stables,  or  nowadays  to  be  chauf- 
feurs when  they  grow  up ;  the  girls'  fancy 
takes  another  direction,  but  along  parallel 
professional  levels.  Suppose  these  early  pre- 
dilections had  been  taken  seriously!  Every 
child  goes  through  a  score  of  fleeting  men- 
tal passions  before  he  settles  down  to  his 
life-work. 

213 


A   FEW    FALLACIES 

in.  An  old  soldier  starts  into  battle 
lightly  equipped.  Experience  has  always 
proved  that  the  first  equipment  of  an  un- 
tried army  is  quadruple  its  real  need,  and 
it  always  becomes  less  and  less  as  the  cam- 
paign proceeds. 

The  small  soldiers  of  our  young  nation 
are  much  too  heavily  equipped.  A  little 
sound  primary  education  free  to  the  pub- 
lic, and  the  "  property  "  of  character  well 
strapped  on,  and  give  them  the  order  to 
march ! 


CAMBRIDGE  .  MASSACHUSETTS 
U    .    S    .   A 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  Funvr  \s7uiru 


(B6221slO)476B 


